“If the budget deficit set down by the caretaker government remains at 6.4% we can forget about the Eurozone,” GERB leader Boyko Borissov said at a press conference.

• Caretaker cabinet proposes a 2023 state budget with a 6.4% deficit

There are three options for bringing it down, he said, raising taxes, cutting expenditure or a new debt. The former prime minister also pointed to some booby-traps in the draft budget, among them the expensive gas stored at Chiren, the gaping holes in the budgets of the municipalities, the missing money for motorways and bridges.

• GERB/SDS willing not to nominate a government if We Continue the Change/DB say they can form a cabinet, Rossen Zhelyazkov says

“We either back the budget and the reforms, or we say, all together: “We are letting the debt go”, because in one month the country is going to collapse,” Boyko Borissov said, and urged We Continue the Change/Democratic Bulgaria, for the sake of the country, to come together and drag the country out of the crisis. “And afterwards – even if we are not there, there will always be parties,” he said.