Bulgaria’s Parliament voted new Prime Minister Boiko Borissov and his Cabinet into office on July 27 2009.
 
A round of applause and the playing of the Bulgarian and European Union anthems followed Borissov’s taking of the oath of office at a special sitting of the National Assembly.
 
The vote for Borissov to head the Government was 162 in favour, 77 against, with one abstention.
 
At about noon, at the close of a two-hour debate and the formal vote, Borissov led his Cabinet into the Government seats in the National Assembly.
 
The parties that voted in favour were Borissov’s own, GERB, which has 116 seats, Volen Siderov’s ultra-nationalists Ataka, 21 seats, the centre-right Blue Coalition, 15, and Yane Yanev’s Order Law and Justice party, 10 seats.
 
The two parties that remain of the former parliamentary majority, Sergei Stanishev’s Bulgarian Socialist Party-dominated Coalition for Bulgaria and Ahmed Dogan’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms, voted against.
 
Borissov pledged to work for Bulgaria’s financial stability, an improved business environment, fighting corruption, improving the judicial system, modernised infrastructure, and to regain European partners’ trust in Bulgaria.
 
"We cannot get out of the crisis without EU money," Borissov said, news agency Focus reported.
 
"We will govern openly, fighting corruption, working hard and persistently until we achieve concrete results," Borissov said.
 
Stanishev said that his party was voting against Borissov’s Government because people who had supported the Coalition for Bulgaria at the July 5 2009 elections had voted for a programme different to that planned by GERB.
 
Speaking for Dogan’s MRF, Lyutvi Mestan hit out at the parties backing the GERB Government, saying that they were hiding behind the single-party Cabinet that Borissov had decided on.
 
Siderov said that Ataka was supporting the approval of Borissov’s Cabinet because Bulgaria’s voters wanted a change from the now-defunct tripartite governing coalition.
 
Borissov would be taking full responsibility for leading Bulgaria out of the crisis, Siderov said.
 
Blue Coalition co-leader Ivan Kostov said that the coalition approved of the priorities set out in GERB’s programme of governance, Focus reported.
 
The Blue Coalition would support the GERB Cabinet in all decisions that coincided with the coalition’s policies, Kostov said.

At the close of proceedings in Parliament, Borissov and his ministers went to Government headquarters in Sofia for a formal handover of power ceremony.