Bulgaria calls April snap election as political instability enters fifth year

Bulgaria is heading to the polls for the eighth time in less than five years. President Iliana Iotova confirmed on Wednesday that a snap parliamentary election will take place on April 19, formalising what has become a near-permanent state of political flux in the European Union's poorest member state. The decree she intends to sign will install a caretaker cabinet led by Andrey Gyurov, a former deputy governor of the Bulgarian National Bank, tasked with steering the country through a campaign that has effectively been running since the last government fell in December.

A cycle that refuses to break

Since the April 2021 election that ended Boyko Borissov's decade-long dominance, Bulgaria has cycled through seven parliaments. None has produced a government capable of serving a full four-year term. The most recent administration, led by Rosen Zhelyazkov, took office in January 2025 and survived six no-confidence motions before collapsing under the weight of sustained anti-corruption protests. Zhelyazkov's resignation in December marked the seventh change of prime minister in the cycle.

The pattern is now familiar to the point of ritual. A government forms, often around a fragile coalition or a minority arrangement. It governs for months, sometimes a year, while parliament fragments further. Protests erupt, sometimes over corruption, sometimes over energy prices, sometimes over judicial reform. A no-confidence vote succeeds or the prime minister resigns. The president dissolves parliament. A caretaker cabinet is appointed. An election is held. The fragments reassemble in slightly different configurations. Repeat.

The presidency as the only stable institution

In this carousel, the presidency has emerged as the only institution with a continuous mandate. Rumen Radev, elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2021, used the office as a platform for anti-establishment rhetoric, repeatedly blocking governments he deemed insufficiently reformist and appointing caretaker cabinets with technocratic profiles. His decision to step down on January 19, 2026, more than a year before his term was due to expire, to launch his own presidential campaign upended the arrangement. Iliana Iotova, his vice-president since 2017, assumed the office automatically and has now set the election date her predecessor had signalled.

Radev's move is unprecedented in post-communist Bulgaria. A sitting president resigning to run for the same office, effectively seeking a fresh mandate mid-term, has no precedent. It also means the April election will be a de facto referendum on Radev's tenure, with the former president likely facing Iotova among other candidates. The presidential contest, constitutionally separate from the parliamentary vote, will run on a different timetable, adding another layer of campaigning to a year already crowded with ballots.

A technocratic caretaker with central banking credentials

Andrey Gyurov's appointment signals a return to the technocratic model Radev favoured. A career central banker who served as deputy governor of the Bulgarian National Bank from 2015 to 2023, Gyurov oversaw banking supervision and financial stability during a period that included the pandemic shock and the subsequent inflation surge. His selection suggests the presidency wants a caretaker government capable of managing Bulgaria's euro adoption preparations, the country targets 2026 entry, without political interference.

Gyurov's cabinet will be sworn in by the National Assembly before the election campaign formally begins. Its mandate is narrow: organise the vote, maintain fiscal discipline, and ensure the continuity of EU-funded programmes. In practice, caretaker governments in Bulgaria have often exceeded that brief, making appointments in the judiciary, security services and state-owned enterprises that outlast their tenure. Whether Gyurov resists that pressure will be an early test of his independence.

Corruption protests and the rule-of-law deficit

The protests that brought down Zhelyazkov were not spontaneous. They followed years of frustration with a judicial system perceived as captured by political interests, and with high-level corruption cases that stall indefinitely. Bulgaria has been under the European Commission's Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) since its 2007 accession, a monitoring framework applied only to Bulgaria and Romania to track judicial reform and anti-corruption efforts. Romania exited the CVM in 2019. Bulgaria remains.

The European Commission's most recent rule-of-law report, published in July 2024, noted some progress in legislative frameworks but highlighted persistent implementation gaps. The prosecution service, the Supreme Judicial Council, and the accountability of magistrates were singled out. Zhelyazkov's government had pledged to address these but delivered little before the protests forced its collapse. The April election will be fought, at least in part, on which party credibly promises to finally break the deadlock.

The euro target and the fiscal straitjacket

Bulgaria's official target for euro adoption is January 2026. The convergence criteria, inflation, fiscal deficit, debt, exchange rate stability, require a degree of policy continuity that the current cycle makes almost impossible to sustain. The caretaker government will inherit a 2025 budget drafted by Zhelyazkov's administration, with a deficit projected at 3% of GDP, the Maastricht ceiling. Any slippage risks delaying the euro entry, a political prize every major party claims to support but few have governed consistently enough to deliver.

The Bulgarian National Bank, where Gyurov spent eight years, has been the most consistent advocate for euro adoption. Governor Dimitar Radev, no relation to the former president, has repeatedly warned that political instability is the single greatest risk to the timeline. With Gyurov now in the prime minister's seat, the central bank's voice enters the executive directly. Whether that translates into credible fiscal discipline during an election campaign remains to be seen.

A fragmented parliament and the coalition arithmetic

The last parliament, elected in June 2024, contained seven parties. The largest, GERB-SDS (the centre-right formation still led by Boyko Borissov), held 68 of 240 seats. The reformist coalition We Continue the Change, Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB) held 39. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), representing the ethnic Turkish minority, held 47 but split into two factions in 2024. The nationalist Revival held 38. The Socialist-led BSP held 19. The populist There Is Such a People (ITN) held 18. No combination yielded a stable majority without the DPS, whose reliability is now uncertain.

Polling since late 2024 suggests the fragmentation will persist. GERB hovers around 25-27%, PP-DB at 14-16%, DPS factions combined at 12-14%, Revival at 13-15%. Smaller parties hover near the 4% threshold. The arithmetic points to another hung parliament, another round of coalition talks, another caretaker government, unless a party breaks through the 30% barrier or the threshold is lowered, a reform some parties have proposed but none have enacted.

The external dimension

Bulgaria's instability has not gone unnoticed in Brussels. The European Commission has linked disbursement of Recovery and Resilience Facility funds, €6.3 billion in grants and €3.4 billion in loans, to judicial and anti-corruption milestones. Several tranches have been delayed because the milestones were not met. The Commission's leverage is real but limited: it cannot force a government to form, nor can it prevent a parliament from blocking reforms. The result is a standoff where Brussels withholds money, Sofia promises reform, elections intervene, and the cycle restarts.

NATO allies also watch closely. Bulgaria hosts a multinational battlegroup in Novo Selo and is a transit point for military aid to Ukraine. Political paralysis has delayed defence procurement and complicated burden-sharing negotiations. The April election will not resolve these structural issues, but the composition of the next parliament will determine whether Bulgaria can credibly commit to the 2% GDP defence spending target NATO expects by 2026.