Bulgaria's Biggest Party Ditches Plans to Back Nationalist Govt

The party of outgoing Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has made a U-turn in its attitude to a possible new cabinet led by the nationalist Patriotic Front (PF) coalition.

GERB will not back any new government within the current legislature, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, who heads the conservative party's faction in Parliament, has explained.

Support from GERB is crucial for any smaller party or coalition seeking to form a government - a task that may potentially be entrusted to the PF - since it has more than a third of all lawmaker seats in Parliament. The second-biggest party, socialist BSP (which does not back a new cabinet either) has less than forty MPs in the 240-seat Parliament.

Earlier, Borisov and some of his lawmakers had said they would back a PF-led effort to form a new cabinet if the nationalists were given the opportunity by President Rosen Plevneliev. They had cited the need to preserve political stability, but also to pay back to the Patriots, who in turn had backed Borisov's outgoing minority government since November 2015.