Debate on the motion tabled by a group of opposition parties of no confidence in the Cabinet on the grounds of mishandling of European Union funds will be held in Parliament on July 29 2008, Bulgarian National Radio reported.

Voting is scheduled for the following day. The rules of Parliament are that voting on a motion of no confidence may start no earlier than 24 hours after debate concludes.

The opposition, tabling the vote on July 23 to coincide with the release of severely critical European Commission reports on Bulgaria, said that the no-confidence vote against the Government was motivated by the "material and moral harm" caused to Bulgaria and its citizens following failure to absorb EU funding.

This will be the sixth no-confidence vote the tripartite coalition Cabinet made up of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, Movement for Rights and Freedoms and National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) has faced since coming into office in 2005. All the previous votes were defeated, but in the most recent vote in early 2008, the NMSP abstained from voting.

The ultra-nationalist Ataka party said that it intended boycotting Parliament, and at a news conference on July 24, said that all government institutions should be boycotted. Ataka leader Volen Siderov called on the media to refrain from covering any activity of the Government as part of this "civil disobedience".

In news related to Ataka, the Appeal Court in Sofia confirmed on July 24 the May 2007 guilty verdict against Vladimir Kouzov, formerly an MP for Ataka and now sitting as an independent, of having sex with a boy below the legal age of consent. Kouzov ascribed the court's verdict to corruption.