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Assen Vassilev warned: We risk being without a budget until August VIDEO

The deficit is 3%, exactly as permitted by the EC's Maastricht criteria

Jan 13, 2025 14:50 51

Assen Vassilev warned: We risk being without a budget until August VIDEO  - 1

Next week we hope to adopt the extension law, with which we can stop the chaos that currently exists in the social system, in the minimums, in the maximums of various payments and thresholds, as well as the legal uncertainty that exists for business, as well as to continue the program for the compensation for electricity for businesses, so that prices do not start to rise again.

This is stated in a video address published on the page of "We continue the change", the co-chairman of the party Assen Vassilev.

"All this could not have happened on time and retroactively. We started talking back in late November, early December that we needed an extension law to prevent this chaos.

We know that adopting a budget takes 4 to 6 weeks. The budget was submitted to the National Assembly on December 13. It is absolutely unrealistic for it to be adopted from December 13 to December 31.

It was on the verge of being realistic when we announced that we would work morning and evening if it had been submitted on December 1. But unfortunately, when it was submitted 2 weeks later, we were in a situation that was not only predictable, but it was also foreseen that we would need an extension law to relieve people's concerns, so that there would be no interruption to business and everything would be settled.

In the budget that has been submitted, and which must be considered as quickly as possible, there is one important thing that the National Assembly cannot change, and that is the deficit. The deficit is 3%, exactly as permitted by the EC's Maastricht criteria.

That is, we are fully within European requirements. Everything else, both revenues and expenditures, can be changed and adjusted by the National Assembly, if there is a will to do so. That is why our appeal to all parliamentary forces last week, which unfortunately was not heard, is to begin considering the budget, to have it adopted at first reading, to make adjustments between the first and second readings, both reducing a significant part of the expenditures and refining the measures related to revenues.

This will allow, regardless of whether we have a government or not, to have a budget that provides security to both business and all Bulgarian citizens, and for this budget to be adopted, so that this stability and security will be present in the country as early as February. Because if we assume that there is no government, we know that mandates go relatively quickly, a budget is adopted in at least 4 weeks, more realistically in 5 or 6 weeks, and we risk, if it is not adopted before we head towards elections, not having a budget until August.

As for the budget itself, we can talk a lot, but this is a topic for a much longer conversation. I just want to highlight a few things that were made in the budgets from 2021 to now. The main thing is that the expenses that are made by decrees of the Council of Ministers were presented in a table in the budget, so that the National Assembly and all citizens can see what these expenses will be made and the National Assembly can approve them. What we see in the 2025 budget is that there is no such table.

Everything has been put back into a black box and from then on it is entirely at the discretion of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, without any clarity on what these funds will be spent on, and their amount has been increased by over 1.6 billion. compared to what was in the budget for 2024", concludes Asen Vassilev.