"The peak of the price shock has not yet arrived. Social anger is about to spill out onto the streets". This was stated to the Bulgarian National Radio by Maya Manolova, chairwoman of the civic platform "Stand Up. Bg".
She explained that on the website https://antispekula.bg/, which her party maintains, there are hundreds of signals of speculative price increases.
"From the first hours after entering the eurozone, prices skyrocketed. Dozens of signals about converting leva to euro for parking lots, children's attractions, car washes, dry cleaning, hair salons, beauty salons.
The prices of food, medicines, and services continue to rise, and this is a huge problem for Bulgarian citizens.
We warned that if the parliament did not take legislative measures to curb the rise in prices, mainly of food products, medicines, bank fees, and mobile services, price terror would occur for Bulgarian citizens. Unfortunately, we turned out to be right. The entire responsibility for the price boom lies with the government of Boyko Borisov.
As early as February 6, we introduced the Law on the Maximum Price Mark-ups of Basic Food Products, and then we also wrote the Anti-Speculation Law to control the prices of basic food products, fuels, medicines, bank fees, and mobile and other services. However, the National Assembly was dealing with other problems.
On Friday, we sent another letter to the parliamentary groups urging them to introduce our two bills. They could have adopted this legislation. They did not do so because there was serious resistance from retail chains, large pharmaceutical companies, banks, and telecoms.
Bulgaria is the only country in Europe that has not taken a single legislative measure to control prices".
Manolova explained that her party would not be part of a left-wing coalition in the elections for a new parliament.
"BSP must apologize, repent for the coalition with GERB. There is no other way to try to regain the trust of its voters".
She also commented on the expectations for the emergence of a presidential party:
"Democracy is competition. There must be competition, there must be an entity that can defeat the status quo bloc".