Bulgaria

The Bulgarian cabinet has approved the central budget and health and social insurance expenditure for next year in an emergency cabinet meeting.

Government sessions are usually held on Wednesday, but ministers have to submit the budget drafts to Parliament by Monday, October 31.

With less than a week to go before the presidential elections in Bulgaria on November 6, the likely winner is proving difficult to predict.

Latest polls have shown that the successor to President Rossen Plevneliev, backed in 2011 by Bulgaria's governing centre-right GERB party, will not be elected in the first round on Sunday.

"The fact that I am leaving the European Commission has nothing to do with my campaign for the post of Secretary General of the UN," stated European Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva on BNR.

"The government will find an investor for the Belene NPP or we will find an option to construct a 7th reactor at the Kozloduy NPP," stated in Plovdiv Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov, cited by Focus agency.

"We need a European Commissioner for ecology or regional development. In these two sectors, Bulgaria has the greatest need and we will attempt to win," stated Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov when answering the question who will replace Kristalina Georgieva.

Bulgaria's European Commissioner Georgieva is to head the World Bank.

Bulgaria's President Rosen Plevneliev has kept his options to run for a second term in office.

Plevneliev is not taking part in next week's presidential elections, but has not explicitly ruled himself out for a subsequent election. His term expires in January.

Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev will not be the country's nomination for European Commissioner, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has said.

Borisov is yet to make clear who will be proposed as a successor to Kristalina Georgieva, the Bulgarian EU Commissioner who on Friday said she would leave in January to take over a CEO position at the World Bank Group.

Bulgaria had the biggest number of road fatalities in the EU last year, European Commission data shows.

The country had a rate of 98 deceased people per million inhabitants, with 95 in neighboring Romania and in Latvia, 82 in Lithuania, and 82 in Croatia.

Malta (26), Sweden (27), the UK (28), Denmark and the Netherlands (31 each) had the lowest number of road fatalities.

An unknown number of Turkish nationals have claimed to be facing persecution in their homeland and are applying for asylum, Bulgarian Interior Minister Rumyana Bachvarova said on Friday.

She told Parliament in a Q&A session that the country was launching asylum procedures on their demand.

Bulgaria will change to winter time on 04:00 EEST October 30, with clocks going back to 03:00 (EET).

The country has adopted daylight saving time alongside Europe, advancing clocks in the summer to make better use of evening daylight.