Bulgarians are heading to the polls on May 20 to elect 18 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). These are the first-ever European election for the country that joined the European Union on January 1, 2007.

The elected MEPs will join the institution in the middle of its five-year term, which expires in June 2009 when regular elections for the seventh European Parliament will be held.

A total of 6 714 809 Bulgarians are eligible to cast a ballot in Sunday's elections, which is unlikely to quicken the pulse of the voters.

Some 185,000 of the core voters of the ethnic Turkish party Movement for Rights and Freedoms will not be allowed to the polling stations, because of a controversial law that the government adopted for the country's first MEP elections. It states that only Bulgarian nationals who have lived in the county or in a EU member state in the three months prior to the election will be allowed to cast their vote.

The total number of Bulgarians who will be denied access to the polls is 260,000.

Polling booths opened at 6 am and will close at 7 pm.

Five polling agencies will conduct exit polls and broadcast the results through the biggest national TV channels and radios - Sova Haris (state-run Bulgarian National TV channel BNT), Gallup (private TV channel bTV), Alpha Research (Nova TV channel), National Center for Public Opinion Research (state-run Bulgarian National Radio) and Scala and Gallup (private Darik national radio).

The participant parties will make their statements at press conferences from the National Palace of Culture, to be broadcast live by the five national media.

The press conferences of the participant parties are expected to go late into the night - 2 am local time at the earliest.

Under local legislation the final results should be known on May 23 at the latest.

Parties in Bulgaria have been eagerly eyeing the MEP elections, hoping that a win there would give them a strong weapon in securing the next government. The opposition has gone further, hoping this to be the first step to toppling the current Socialist-led three-party coalition government.

Brussels in its turn has viewed the elections as the first big test of how much public support exists in Bulgaria for the EU.

Romania, the other country that join the European Union together with Bulgaria on January 1, 2007, will elect its 35 MEPs later in the autumn.

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