The consultations on renegotiating the terms of the coalition agreement between Bulgaria's largest ruling party GERB and its junior coalition partner the Reformist Bloc (RB) officially begin on Wednesday.

During the consultations, the two parties have to identify the priority reforms and outline a schedule for their implementation, daily Dnevnik informs.

The chairperson of the parliamentary group of GERB, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, said that the partners will discuss the priority policies of the government for reforms of the judiciary and the electoral legislation as well as reforms in the healthcare, education and energy sectors.

GERB and RB will also discuss the introduction of remote electronic voting and making progress on  electronic government.

The two parties foreesee an annex to the coalition agreement to be signed at the end of January or beginning of February.

The most important issues for RB are: the judicial reform, anti-corruption legislation, changes to the Election Code and electronic voting.

The co-chairperson of the parliamentary group of RB, Nayden Zelenogorski, stated that if no real progress is made on the judicial reform and anti-corruption legislation within the next six months, he will propose RB to leave the coalition government.

Zelenogorski clarified that this was not an ultimatum, but rather a call on ministries to speed up their efforts.

Tensions within the ruling majority started to appear in December last year after the adoption of the amendments to the constitution concerning the reform of the judiciary and the resignation of then Justice Minister Hristo Ivanov.

Discontent with the adopted amendments, one of the parties constituting RB – Democrats for Strong Bulgaria (DSB) withdrew its support for the government and became an opposition party.

However DSB member and Health Minister Petar Moskov did not follow his fellow party members and retained his position in the cabinet.

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