Bulgaria's President: State finances are stable, there will be no cuts in pensions and salaries

For the period the caretaker government is in charge, Bulgaria will not provide Ukraine with fighter jets, anti-aircraft missile complexes, tanks or armoured personnel carriers, President Rumen Radev said on March 21.

He defined this as a sovereign decision and called on the parties participating in the elections to clarify their position on this issue to their voters right now.

Radev confirmed the country's non-participation in the joint European order of ammunition for Ukraine and stressed that Bulgaria would support European diplomatic efforts to restore peace.

President Rumen Radev participated in the conference "Anti-corruption and National Security".

He also pointed out that the country's finances are stable, but if the future MPs succumb to populism, bad scenarios could arise.

"The finance ministry is keeping the state finances stable. I want to congratulate it for ensuring record revenue collection and ensuring annual increases in pensions and salaries. There is categorical speculation that there will be cuts in salaries and pensions, there is categorical speculation that there will be a change in the exchange rate of the lev against the euro and there will be some new IMF loans. But this is a warning that if we continue with the populist policies imposed by the previous few parliaments, we could eventually end up with some of these bad scenarios. We are far from them at the moment, but it is up to the responsibility of our MPs to make sure that this does not happen.

"Could you imagine if the caretaker government in the last Parliament had succumbed to this populist pressure from the rostrum and tabled a budget that they were going to immediately increase spending by 10 billion. If the caretaker government had given in then, we would already be talking about this scenario. I expect that the budget that will be presented and tabled in the National Assembly will have a responsible attitude to the purchasing power of the public, to the development of the economy, but at the same time to avoid a debt spiral," Radev said.

Bulgaria needs a full-fledged justice reform that all political parties should engage in, the head of state further said. In his words, the US State Department's report finds problems that have long been familiar to Bulgarians (referring to the annual 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, released by the US State Department on Monday).

"A justice reform that excludes arbitrary arrests as well as selective justice and escape from punishment. But there is still a sense in Bulgarian society that there is selective justice. I look forward to the changes proposed for the second time by the Ministry of Justice being debated and adopted by the new Parliament. Bulgaria owes a meaningful justice reform not to someone abroad, but to its citizens.

Caretaker Justice Minister Krum Zarkov took part in the forum. The event was organised by the Ministry of Justice in cooperation with the Basel Institute for Governance and the Centre for the Study of Democracy.

Images by Dessislava Kulelieva

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