The council of the ruling coalition will gather the week of February 2 2009 to discuss this summer's elections for European MPs and for the Bulgarian National Assembly.

The meeting is, as of yet, not specified for exact day and time, but information about the council has come from the leadership of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF). The leaders of the parties, Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, Simeon Saxe-Coburg and Ahmed Dogan, from BSP, NMSP and MRF, respectively, had allegedly met over the weekend, but it transpired that no such meeting had taken place, and rather was due to be held this week, Dnevnik daily reported.

The meeting this week is expected to discuss amendments in the constitution, so that the election for the European and Bulgarian parliaments can be held in the same day. Until now, BSP have been releasing controversial signals as to whether they actually support the scheme  "two elections in one" or not. The official stance for now is that "they are researching the pros and cons of such an election and will take a decision upon making a proper evaluation". The Turkish-led MRF, however, was firmly against the notion of combined elections.

On a different matter, NMSP believed that preferential voting for specific candidates from the political parties had to be allowed, while BSP wanted to implement a plan where 58 seats in Parliament would be elected in the aforementioned manner – the vote would be for an individual, and not according to political alliance or affiliation.

Lastly, the nomination of NMSP MP Solomon Passi for secretary general of Nato was also to be discussed.