The Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms had failed to come up with solutions to people's problems in the four years the two parties had been in power, Martin Dimitrov, co-leader of the centre-right Blue Coalition, told the first sitting of the 41^st National Assembly on July 14 2009.

"Now we have to see what is the real situation with the country's budget, and to agree that if we don't introduce changes to it, things will become really bad in September," Dimitrov said.

"The truth is that more than three million Bulgarians do not live well, and cannot cover their loans, which brings us to the big question - which is how people would live better in the autumn," he said.

Dimitrov said that failure to make decisions at a time of crisis would be devastating for the country.

"That's why Bulgaria needs a stable ruling majority in Parliament. GERB won the elections, but the most important thing is that the parties who are members of the European People's Party have a majority in Parliament that wants to make reforms."

"We also have enough MPs to consider changes to the constitution, that can solve the problems of the Bulgarian judiciary and election legislation."

"The most important thing now is to cut expenses, because the outgoing Government was based on its vastly expanded administration. We need to follow the principle of one ministry-one parliamentary committee," Dimitrov said.

One of the ways to restore European Union trust in Bulgarian institutions was to keep people connected to the former communist secret services out of the executive branch of government."This is what we recommend," he said.

Dimitrov asked that the parliamentary committees supervising the work of the State Agency for National Security and on the fight against corruption and the absorption of EU funds be chaired by representatives of all parties, not just the ruling majority.

"We need to have control and no one should be scared of this," he said.

Bulgaria needed a new set of rules on elections as soon as possible, as well as a reduction of the social security contribution burden, he said.

The Blue Coalition said that the Prosecutor-General should be elected by Parliament, not, as is now the case, by the Supreme Judicial Council.

All deals signed by the outgoing Cabinet, and the last-minute appointments made by the departing Government, should be reviewed by a special parliamentary ad hoc committee, he said.