Bulgarian Democratic Centre

President Rossen Plevneliev will hold talks with representatives of the Patriotic Front and the Bulgarian Democratic Centre - Naroden Sayuz within the framework of the political consultations with the parties represented in Parliament for dealing with the government crisis.

The parliamentary group of the Bulgarian Democratic Centre (BDC) dissolved on Friday after five MPs left it.

The five MPs quitting BDC are deputy parliament speaker Yavor Haytov, Rumen Yonchev, Svetlin Tanchev, Georgi Kovachev and Borislav Iglev, who are all members of the newly established "People's union" party, dnevnik.bg informed.

On Thursday, the Bulgarian parliament approved at first reading the draft government budget for next year.

A total of 138 MPs voted in favour of the draft budget, 65 lawmakers were against, while nine abstained, daily Dnevnik informs.

Bulgarian MPs will convene for their first plenary sitting after the summer recess on Wednesday.

At the beginning, the parliamentary groups will announce their priorities for the fourth session of the 43rd National Assembly.

The Bulgarian Parliament is to hold an election of the country's new ombudsman on Thursday.

There are two candidates for the position - the incumbent ombudsman Konstantin Penchev, who was nominated for a second term by the Reformist Bloc (RB) and Maya Manolova, who is a nomination of her colleagues from the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP).

The referendum, which has been proposed by Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev, will feature only the question concerning the introduction of remote electronic voting.

This was decided by the Bulgarian Parliament on Tuesday with 131 MPs voting in favour, 41 voting against, while three abstained, daily Dnevnik reports.

Proposed changes to Bulgaria's constitution meant to push forward a reform of the judicial system have been backed by 75% of the members of parliament.

A total of 180 MPs from both governing and opposition political parties have signed a draft bill calling for amendments to the constitution that was submitted to parliament on Friday.

Two protests will take place in front of the parliament building, as Bulgarian MPs are to debate the judicial reform on Friday.

Citizens participating in the so-called "coffee drinking" protest demand a judicial reform without compromises and are opposed to the joint project, which was agreed by most of the parliamentary represented parties on Thursday.

Political parties in Bulgaria's parliament have agreed to submit a joint project for changing the constitution to move forward with reform of the judiciary.

The opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) refused to head the parliamentary committee on constitutional amendments.

Earlier on Wednesday, the main ruling party GERB proposed to BSP to head the committee, which will be established after the constitutional amendments were tabled to parliament on Tuesday.