A total of 11 MPs from the ruling coalition partner National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) left the party and said they would become independent MPs.

On November 27 five MPs were expelled after a decision was taken by the party’s group in Parliament. The five “rebels”, as they were called by Bulgarian-language media, were Plamen Panayotov, Borislav Ralchev, Borislav Velikov, Vladimir Donchev and Atanas Shterev. NMSP leader and former prime minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg personally asked for the five to be expelled. All of them have, over the past two years, been repeatedly taking a different stance from the NMSP’s official party line, criticising the party’s participation in the ruling coalition with Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms.

On November 28 six other NMSP MPs said they were leaving the party because of the decision taken the day before. These were Nikolai Svinarov, Vanya Tsvetkova, Lidia Shouleva, Tatyana Kalkanova, Valentin Miltenov and Ilko Dimitrov. With the departure of these 11 MPs, NMSP has a total of 41 MPs. This will not threaten the ruling coalition since combined the three parties will still have a majority of 157 MPs out of the 240 seats in Parliament.