Bulgaria's prime minister Plamen Oresharski resigns

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/23/bulgaria-prime-minister-plamen-oresharski-resigns

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Bulgaria's prime minister, Plamen Oresharski, stood down on Wednesday, leaving his successor to sort out the Balkan state's worst banking crisis since the 1990s with the fate of its fourth largest lender undecided.

Oresharski, who has been in power for just over a year, had flagged up his departure after the ruling Socialists' poor showing in May's European parliamentary elections. His resignation paves the way for an interim government to take over in August and a general election in October.

The vote will mark the second snap election in less than two years in the EU's poorest member state. The prolonged instability has hampered efforts to make the economy more efficient and prompted a credit rating downgrade in June.

The Socialist-led coalition increased the minimum wage, worked to cut red tape for businesses and found investors for a €1.5bn (£1.2bn) sovereign bond last month despite the banking crisis.

Oresharski's tenure, however, was overshadowed by months of street protests against corruption, deadly floods that hit the Black Sea city of Varna in June and a standoff between Brussels and Moscow over a Russian-led gas pipeline project.

The Socialists ruled with the ethnic Turkish MRF party in a minority coalition, which relied on the outside support of the nationalist Attack party to cling to power and survive repeated no confidence votes while in office.

Hundreds of people gathered in Sofia as news of the resignation broke, chanting "victory", as two lines of police looked on in front of the parliament building. Wednesday also marked the first anniversary of an eight-hour siege of parliament by protesters demanding the government's resignation.