Bulgaria: Iliana Yotova elected president with 57.6%, a win for Radev’s government, which calls for dialogue with Moscow

Iliana Yotova, who was already serving as president, is the first woman elected president of Bulgaria. With all votes counted, the Central Election Commission announced on Monday, November 2, that in Sunday’s runoff Ms Yotova took 57.6% and Andrey Gyurov, the candidate of the pro-Western liberal opposition, 39.5%. The 62-year-old president has backed dialogue with Moscow and opposes further military aid to Ukraine.

Mr Gyurov conceded defeat. “This is how Bulgarian citizens voted,” he said, adding that the result must be accepted as it stands. Ms Yotova said she would work for national consensus, bridging political divisions. “I voted for national consensus through dialogue, for institutions that work for citizens, for a strong state with its own foreign policy in a strong Europe,” she said after voting. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated her and wrote that she looks forward to working with her on security and defence, competitiveness and energy independence.

A test for the Radev government

The election was the first major test for Prime Minister Rumen Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria party, which backed Ms Yotova. In the parliamentary election of April 19 the party won 131 of the 240 seats and an outright majority. Observers note that with Ms Yotova’s victory the presidency stays in the hands of the governing majority. A former television journalist and Socialist member of the European Parliament, Ms Yotova was twice elected vice-president alongside Mr Radev, in 2016 and 2021, and took over the presidency in January when he resigned to run for a seat in parliament. Her vice-president will be Kiril Valchev, a 53-year-old lawyer and journalist who has headed the Bulgarian News Agency since 2021. The president’s role is mainly ceremonial, as the office has no executive powers and major decisions go through parliament.

The runoff turned into a referendum on foreign policy. “We are choosing between war and peace,” Mr Radev had said before the vote. Mr Gyurov, who as caretaker prime minister signed a security cooperation agreement with Ukraine in March, sharply criticised Russian aggression. In the first round Ms Yotova took 34.8% and Mr Gyurov 31.95%, while pro-Russian Kostadin Kostadinov of the nationalist Revival party came third with 12.5%. Turnout in the runoff was below 30%, partly because most opposition parties, among them Boyko Borissov’s GERB, did not field a candidate.

Russia and the drones in the Black Sea

At a campaign rally on October 6, Ms Yotova said that “as long as I am president, no Bulgarian soldier will go to Ukraine”, although the Constitution gives only parliament the power to send troops abroad. Two days before the vote she said that “Russia is by no means an enemy of Bulgaria”. The election took place while ships were being attacked by drones off the Bulgarian coast, for which the European Council criticised Russia. Ms Yotova and Mr Radev have not named Moscow as responsible. Bulgaria has been a member of NATO since 2004 and of the EU since 2007.