Political 2025: Protests and government in resignation before eurozone entry

The cabinet of Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov lasted 11 months and 10 days. Bulgaria's 105th government was voted into office in January 2025 after long and difficult negotiations between mandate holders GERB-SDS and the smaller parliamentary parties – BSP, ITN and the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms /the members of parliament who remained loyal to Ahmed Dogan during the split in DPS/. In mid-April, at a time when the country was making efforts to receive a positive convergence report on its accession to the eurozone, the coalition around the former honorary chairman of the DPS withdrew its confidence in the cabinet. However, it continued to work, receiving support from DPS-New Beginning formation, headed by Delyan Peevski.

In the middle of the year /on June 4/ it became clear that Bulgaria would be granted the right to adopt the euro as its currency on January 1, 2026. The news was followed by six votes of no confidence within six months, in which the government survived, but resigned after mass protests provoked by the proposed budget for 2026. The protests passed under the motto of changing the governance model, nicknamed "Borissov-Peevski".

2026 begins with political turmoil because of the completion of Bulgaria's European integration process and the protests caused by the mistakes and scandals of the government. These are the events that mark the political year 2025, says Svetlin Tachev, a political scientist of the "Myara" agency.

"This government had a chance to govern as much as it wanted, without any particular problems, as long as it did not make mistakes and cause scandals. However, it did not manage to do so. The fact that the draft budget managed to cause this wave of protests shows that the accumulated dissatisfaction was indeed great. In a normal political situation, such a topic could only cause minimal tension, as it happens with every budget. This time, however, it brought hundreds of thousands of young and old, with different political beliefs, to the streets. These protests continue a transformational process that began with the dissatisfaction of 2020 and is going through different stages, and we are yet to see what it will lead to," the analyst says.

One of the mistakes the government made was the arrest of Mayor of Varna Blagomir Kotsev, preceded by that of Sofia Deputy Mayor Nikola Barbutov. The two events seriously shook the opposition coalition PP-DB and almost led to its collapse after co-chair and former Prime Minister, Kiril Petkov, resigned and left the parliament.

The second largest parliamentary coalition managed to unite and mobilize its voters. The reason is that they managed to change the focus of the previous model of opposition "East - West", to that between the status quo and change, which provided an opportunity for mobilization at a supra-party level.

The passing year 2025 was a breath of fresh air for voters, who needed a break after the series of 7 early elections. A time during which they lost their guiding point, political scientist Tatyana Burudzhieva says.

"The guiding point is related to goal setting. If I can set a goal that I can start fulfilling, this is the thing that allows me to have an assessment and reaction to every action or move of politicians. If their move works for my goal, I will support them, and if not – I will look for others who are closer to fulfilling my goal. Since we allow ourselves to be turned into fan clubs and a crowd, we allow ourselves to miss the important things. That is why I think that the fans at football matches are a good expression of what we have become and we can see ourselves if we look at their actions."

According to her, there is nothing wrong with the fact that there are protests, while representative democracy creates less of the feeling among citizens that they are included in the decision-making processes and that those who do not like political decisions are a minority. The situation is rather the opposite - political decisions are made by a minority, which creates tension and grounds for protests. It becomes increasingly difficult to convince the majority that the decisions should be followed:

"In politics, it is very important, when we talk about democracy, that power comes from the people. The less people have the feeling that power comes from them and the more they are convinced that everything is decided during backstage games, as our parliament demonstrated this year, the more certain they are to be part of a very low-quality amateurism in politics. Therefore, 2025 will rather be classified as the year in which Bulgarians were made to believe that they were carrying out historical deeds, while politicians tried to get a shift in power, and the business behind them – a breath of air before the introduction of the rules related to membership in the eurozone. This, of course, will happen sooner or later, but it is another thing to live a few more years the way we are used to."

As a significant shortcoming in the work of the government of Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov, both political scientists report the lack of a timely and active explanatory campaign related to the upcoming replacement of the Bulgarian lev with the euro from January 1, 2026:

"The government was very late with this action and started doing it in the last moment. Naturally, the fears of Bulgarian citizens more or less remained because they did not understand the process. Moreover, we went through a period of time in which it was said that just by entering the eurozone, we automatically become part of the Club of the Rich. However, this was only the positive story. As the end of the year approached, the other story began to be told – that we need to slow down a bit and tighten our belts, because turbulence is possible. Apart from this, we are witnessing the rhetoric that the control bodies are fighting speculation, which certainly exists, but in practice, they do not seem to be doing much. All this, along with the traditional increase in the prices of goods and services during the winter months, may lead to an escalation of social discontent," Svetlin Tachev says and adds that the processes that are coming up in the first months can tell us a lot about what 2026 will be.

The political scientist expressed hope that the country's entry into the eurozone under the conditions of a prolonged budget, instead of a regular one, will not have a particularly negative impact on our daily lives and economy, but will certainly be actively used as something negative during the upcoming election campaign.