Bulgaria’s pro-European parties lead polls ahead of EU elections

Bulgaria’s two main pro-European political formations are comfortably ahead in the polls ahead of the European elections in June, an opinion poll by the Market Links polling agency has found.

According to the polls, former prime minister Boyko Borissov’s GERB remains the country’s largest party with 22.9% of the vote, followed by the centre-right pro-European coalition PP-DB with 19.7%. The gap between the two formations has narrowed to less than 4%, from around 6% at the end of last year.

“If the European elections were held this week, three political forces would increase their results – PP-DB, Vazrazhdane and the BSP,” commented sociologist Dobromir Zhivkov of Market Links, as quoted by bTV.

Bulgarian voter turnout for the EU elections is expected at around 30%.

The two leading parties are in an informal coalition and support the government of Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov, who was nominated as prime minister by the PP-DB. The two largest parties are currently negotiating a power-sharing deal that could see former European Commissioner Maria Gabriel (GERB) appointed Prime Minister.

The Market Links survey shows that the Turkish minority party DPS (ALDE) is the third political force in the country, with 12.1% support for the European elections.

The pro-Russian nationalist party Vazrazhdane has 11.7% support.

“This party positions itself as the only open Eurosceptic nationalist force and this leads to an increase in their weight in European elections”, commented Dobromir Zhivkov.

The fifth political force is the pro-Russian socialist party BSP, which according to the polls has 8.4% support in the European elections. Support for the populist ITN party was measured at between 3.2 and 3.3 per cent, meaning that the party has no chance of winning an MEP seat for the time being. Bulgaria has 17 MEPs, and to be elected an MEP needs the support of at least 5.9% of the electorate.

However, there is still a large number of people who are reluctant to vote in the June EU elections, according to the Market Links poll, which puts the figure at around 14-15%.

But according to sociologist Dobromir Zhivkov, the votes of the undecided are unlikely to change the outcome dramatically, adding that the EU elections are likely to reflect the current status quo in the Bulgarian parliament.

“The current five parties that have representatives in parliament are very likely to send representatives to the European Parliament. All the others seem to have no real chance of doing so,” the Market Links sociologist said.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)