APRIL 20, 2026 12:33 PM CET
BY SEBASTIAN STARCEVICSlovenia’s caretaker prime minister, Robert Golob, on Monday admitted his party was unable to form a government, potentially paving the way for the return of populist Janez Janša.

Golob’s liberal Freedom Movement won last month’s national election by a razor-thin margin, securing 29 of the 90 seats in the Slovenian parliament, but failed to secure a governing majority. After a month of failed coalition talks, Golob said he had informed Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar that his party had resigned itself to leading the parliamentary opposition.

Janša, whose Slovenian Democratic Party secured 28 seats in last month’s election, is now expected to attempt to form a right-wing coalition government.

APRIL 19, 2026 7:06 PM CET
BY CHRISTIAN OLIVERRumen Radev, a Russia-aligned former president, scored an emphatic win in Bulgaria’s election on Sunday, crushing long-established parties that he accused of being the key enablers of an oligarch-dominated mafia state.

The election was the Balkan country’s eighth in five years — amid rolling political crises and fragile coalitions — and 62-year-old former air force commander Radev used his newly created Progressive Bulgaria party to break the impasse.

With 78 percent of ballots counted, it looked like he had effectively overturned Bulgaria’s old political order, winning about 44 percent of the vote, putting him on track for an absolute majority. A pro-EU liberal reformist coalition was in second place, with about 14 percent.

Radev has encouraged Ukraine to sue for peace, does not support sending arms to Kyiv and says his insistence that Crimea is “Russian” simply reflects a strategic reality. He is also a critic of Sofia’s accession to the euro this year, arguing the new currency has stoked inflation.

In remarks after Sunday’s election, he portrayed his desire for dialogue with Russia as being increasingly part of the European mainstream. He argued that diplomacy with Moscow would be necessary not only to secure a new security architecture for the continent but was vital in relation to energy costs and industrial competitiveness. He hinted during the campaign that he favored cheap oil imports from Russia.

​​In Brussels, reactions from some in the center-right European People’s Party and center-left Socialists and Democrats groups were forthright. Czech conservative MEP Tomáš Zdechovský said, “Bulgaria has sent a clear — and deeply concerning — signal.”

“Rumen Radev, a politician openly critical of support for Ukraine and long seen as sympathetic to Russia, appears to have secured a parliamentary majority. This is no longer just an election result — it is a serious geopolitical shift,” he wrote on X.

Austrian Social Democratic MEP Andreas Schieder said, “With Radev, the next Putin friend will likely enter the Council, and Orbán is thus merely passing the baton,” describing Radev’s election as a “setback for Europe
​​​​​