No meeting of the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation today. It was canceled last night by the Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Council Tomislav Donchev. The reason is the refusal of the national representative organizations of employers to participate in the convened meeting.
"The government will approve the bills related to the 2026 Budget in the form agreed with the parties supporting the government", says the statement sent to the media.
After the failure of the meeting of the Tripartite Council, the cabinet is expected to meet to adopt the budget plan for next year. It is not yet known when this will happen.
„We have not boycotted the social dialogue, we are actively participating in it.
This situation is without analogue in the recent Bulgarian history.
„In the convened meeting - notice the entire content of the press release, it suggests how, since there is no such meeting, in this form, as agreed between the partner parties in this coalition, it is obviously agreed in order to seek the support of the deputies from „New Beginning“. The budget will be considered in this form in the Council of Ministers and will be submitted to the National Assembly in this way. This was apparently the original idea“, commented to bTV Rumen Radev, former Minister of Energy and Chairman of the Board of the Association of Bulgarian Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.
„There are meetings of the National Trade Union Congress, things are said – “choose your time, two, three, it doesn't matter“. Whatever is done after that, this same draft budget, without any adjustments - as a result of this, at previous, at previous, I don't know how many more meetings, it is simply submitted“, he noted.
“In the course of these intensive conversations from last week to yesterday, for example, at a certain point, a few days ago, the argument was also brought up - “but there is no time to make any adjustments. Do you know how long it takes“. And then, what is the point of holding a National Council of State and Local Governments meeting half an hour after the end of which you have to submit a draft budget to the Council of Ministers“, asked Rumen Radev.
In his words, this is a “demonstrative, formal attitude to the process“.
"A kind of budget has been given and from that moment on you either like it or don't like it, but you comment, but not quite”, he noted.
“At all working meetings, at the committees of the National Council of State and Local Governments, we don't just participate - we actively participate. At each of them, including the meetings related to the so-called small budgets, the budget of the National Health Insurance Fund and, respectively, the budget that we were considering and on which we also have positions - the state social security. In all these meetings, we actively participated. From day one we have commented on the minimum wage, its binding, the automaticity, the consequences it has - especially in the budget“, Rumen Radev pointed out.
“We have significant remarks. Because they concern first the structure of the expenditure part of the budget, to which expenditure part, in practice, they put a 3% deficit, and the creation of various revenue items begins. No matter which item, with what probability it will happen“, the chairman of the Board of Directors of AIKB added.