Protesters first took to the streets last Wednesday in Sofia against a draft 2026 budget that they say is an attempt to mask widespread corruption.
At a fresh rally on Monday – the biggest in years – protesters packed a huge square in front of parliament, carrying posters urging a change of government.
“We are here to protest for our future. We want to be a European country, not one ruled by corruption and the mafia,” Ventsislava Vasileva, a 21-year-old student, told AFP.
Another protester, a 24-year-old who works in a bank and gave his name only as Georgi, said he was protesting against “all the arrogance” shown by the country’s leaders and “all the lawlessness”.
After the main rally ended, clashes with the police broke out when some of the protesters, their faces covered, attacked the headquarters of the DPS party which supports the government with stones and bottles and threw firecrackers at the police.
Police retaliated with tear gas. Several arrests were also made, AFP reporters saw.
A nearby office of the governing GERB party was also vandalised.
‘Provocation’
President Rumen Radev called for all violence to stop, dismissing it as “a provocation by the mafia,” and for the government to step down.
“There is only one way out: resignation and early elections,” the head of state said on Facebook.
Protests were also held in several other cities, local media reported.
The government is expected to propose amendments to the 2026 budget this week, having promised not to push through contested points such as an increase in social-security contributions.
With Bulgaria joining the eurozone on Jan 1, the budget will be the country’s first calculated in euros.
Critics say the institutions managing Bulgaria’s public finances are corrupt and the budget measures will only entrench graft.
“If the government handles the situation rationally, it should survive this crisis,” Daniel Smilov, a political scientist and programme director at the Centre for Liberal Strategies, told AFP ahead of Monday’s demonstration.
He added that besides redrafting the budget, new appointments in the judiciary were “long overdue” and “necessary to alleviate the public concerns with the incapacity of the state to react to cases of corruption”.
Bulgaria ranks as among the most corruption-ridden EU members, along with Hungary and Romania, according to watchdog Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index.
The Balkan country has seen seven snap elections following massive anti-graft protests in 2020 against the government of three-time premier Boyko Borissov.
Borissov’s conservative GERB party topped the most recent election last year, forming the current coalition government.