The rightist Democrats for Strong Bulgaria party has criticized the Borisov government for its decision to back out of applying for the Eurozone waiting room, the ERM II, in 2010.

At a special news conference earlier on Friday, the Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov and his Deputy, Finance Minister Simeon Djankov, announced that “hidden” public procurement contracts made by the Stanishev government had recently been uncovered, thus doubling Bulgaria’s 2009 budget deficit from 1,9% to 3,7%.

As a result, the Borisov government has given up on its intention to apply for accession to the ERM II in 2010.

“The GERB party has got to restructure its priorities. We can’t be giving up our strategic goals in a moment of panic,” stated in the city of Shumen the Deputy Chair of the DSB party, Ekaterina Mihaylova.

The DSB party of former PM Ivan Kostov makes up the rightist Blue Coalition together with the Union for Democratic Forces. The Blue Coalition and the nationalist party Ataka are the major allies of PM Borisov’s GERB party which has no absolute majority in Parliament.

The rightists from the DSB have called up the Cabinet to regroup in order to set the task whose accomplishment will allow Bulgaria to join the ERM II in 2011, thus making the last step before the adoption of the common European currency.

“This can be done through immediate revision of the state budget and real, brave reforms which were are going to throw our weight behind. Thus, the budget deficit has to kept below 3%. But this entails reforms in the public sector, healthcare and education,” Mihaylova stated.

She criticized the ruling party GERB for failing to follow two crucial pieces of advice given to it by the DSB in 2009.

The first one of those was the revision of the public finances of the country as soon as the new government took office in the second half of 2009. According to the DSB, this would have prevented any bad surprises such as the “hidden contracts” and the “hidden deficit”.

“This was necessary so that we could know back then who had done what because today, eight months into the term of the new government, the problem with the budget deficit does not stem only from the activities of the former government of the three-way coalition,” the Deputy DSB Chair said.

In her words, the second thing the GERB Cabinet had been advised to do was “bold reforms” as a response to the economic crisis. The DSB has expressed its dissatisfaction with the package of 60 anti-crisis measures adopted recently by the Borisov government as insufficient.

MP Mihaylova reminded that the DSB party had backed the GERB Cabinet based on three promised goals: tackling corruption and organized crime, joining the Eurozone, and absorbing EU funds.

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