The ministries of energy, transport and communications will most likely be merged to enable Boiko Borissov’s GERB government to slim down public spending, according to a report on July 17 2009 in daily Dnevnik.
 
This would mean splitting up the vast economy and energy ministry created in 2005 by the now-outgoing Government, with Borissov – according to Dnevnik – planning to include a high tech portfolio as part of the economy ministry.
 
The report was one of a series in various Bulgarian media as the country awaited Borissov’s announcement of his cabinet. On July 16, President Georgi Purvanov handed a mandate, valid for seven days, to Borissov to form a government. Borissov has said that he will do so by July 21.
 
Bulgarian-language daily Sega said that Borissov – who intends that his party will govern alone without bringing other right-wing parties into a ruling coalition – would have three deputy ministers.
 
But, so daily Klasa said, World Bank vice president Kristalina Georgieva would not be among them, contrary to earlier speculation.
 
Klasa said that Borissov could replace the incumbent governor of central Bulgarian National Bank Ivan Iskrov with EIBank chief executive Petar Andronov.
 
The decision by the outgoing Sergei Stanishev cabinet to re-appoint Iskrov irked Borissov, who made it clear that as heir-apparent to the governance of Bulgaria he did not like the Socialist-led coalition attempting to rule from the grave.
 
Dnevnik, on July 16, and a day later Standart, said that Roumyana Zheleva, elected in June 2009 as a member of the European Parliament on the GERB list, would "probably" return as foreign minister.
 
Standart said that Borissov would keep Meglena Kouneva on as Bulgaria’s European Commissioner. Kouneva, formerly Bulgaria’s chief negotiator on EU accession and later European Integration Minister in the Saxe-Coburg and Stanishev administrations, became Bulgaria’s member of the EC when the country joined the bloc in January 2007.
 
Kouneva was elected as an MEP in June 2009 at the head of the ticket of Saxe-Coburg’s party, the National Movement for Stability and Progress, and said recently that she had decided to serve out the balance of her term – to autumn this year – as a European Commissioner rather than take up her European Parliament seat.
 
When Saxe-Coburg’s party was denied a seat in Bulgaria’s national Parliament at the July 5 2009 elections, few believed that there was any chance of Kouneva being kept on at the EC, and that Borissov was much more likely to want to nominate someone closer to the ranks of his party to succeed her.