On Wednesday the parliament of Bulgaria accepted the resignation of the government of Boyko Borissov submitted straight after the presidential elections. The change in the Executive has come at a very difficult moment. The ruling party Gerb has refused to form a new government in this parliament, and this stand coincides with the position of the biggest opposition group, the Bulgarian Socialist Party. The incumbent head of state Rosen Plevneliev can neither dissolve the parliament, nor schedule parliamentary elections, because he is now in the last three months of his term. President-elect Rumen Radev cannot do that either, because he has not stepped in office.

The incumbent president has the right to appoint a caretaker government but in the unprecedented situation that has emerged, he has agreed with the president-elect that the two shall specify its line-up jointly, so that once the new president steps in office there won't be any need for him to make changes to it. The country however faces other challenges than the prospect of being governed by a caretaker administration during the terms of two presidents until April or later. During the same time snap parliamentary elections should be scheduled and, before this parliament goes away the election law should be amended in tune with the outcome of the national referendum held parallel with the presidential elections. The change is substantial, since it is about the introduction of some kind of a majoritarian electoral system. Given the unusual complexity of the situation, President Rosen Plevneliev has decided to summon the Advisory Council on National Security in which President-elect Rumen Radev will also take part.

To this tangle we should add the sharp political confrontation following the presidential elections. There is confrontation not only between the ruling party and the opposition, but also between the former coalition partners (Gerb and the Reformist Bloc) and their supporters in parliament, the Patriotic Front. Amid this confrontation the changes of the electoral system should be discussed, as well as the 2017 state budget. The debate on the draft budget is expected to open on Friday, but the Bulgarian Socialist Party, DPS (the predominantly ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms) and the Patriotic Front already have strong objections against it. Objections are so similar that some observers have termed this resistance a common front, and so irreconcilable that others have defined it as a boycott of the draft. Whether there is a common front or a boycott, the votes of the three groups are not enough to reject the draft in this parliament. It is however not known what weight these groups will have in the next one.

On Thursday President Rosen Plevneliev started political consultations with the intention to prevent the political crisis from growing into a parliamentary one. Before giving mandates to form a new government within this National Assembly, the president will meet for talks with all parliamentary forces to check the possibility of forming a government in the incumbent parliament. If this is impossible, he has to look for potential sensible dates and periods for snap parliamentary elections. Also he has to check into what work the incumbent National Assembly can do before the snap elections come, if such elections are scheduled. In this context everybody agrees that the head of state is faced with a fairly difficult puzzle at the very end of his term of office.

English Daniela Konstantinova