Threatened with expulsion, two Bulgarian MEPs leave Renew political group

Elena Yoncheva and Taner Kabilov, both from the Bulgarian centre-left Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), announced Monday they were leaving Renew after the European Parliament's liberal group threatened to exclude them for supporting the US-sanctioned DPS leader Delyan Peevski.

“We terminate as of now our membership in the Renew Europe Group,” the two MEPs wrote in a letter that Euronews saw, which was sent Monday to president of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola and members of Renew's bureau.

The DPS has also announced that it is withdrawing from Renew and ALDE, Renew's main political party, after both formations expelled the Bulgarian party on Sunday.

Renew's political bureau was due to meet on Monday evening to launch an exclusion procedure ahead of the entire political group's vote on 14 January.

“Either you go out of the DPS and you are not concerned by this exclusion procedure, or you stay and you are concerned,” a Renew official told Euronews just before both MEPs quit.

However, the source added that they could stay “if they leave the party and distance themselves from Peevski."

The two MPs finally decided to remain loyal to the DPS and leave.

'Fundamentally incompatible'

In October, Bulgaria held its seventh parliamentary elections in four years. Plagued by governmental instability, the country saw the DPS win 11% of the vote amid accusations of vote-buying.

The party has been moribund since oligarch Delyan Peevski, sanctioned for corruption by the US under the Magnitsky Act, took over its leadership after a split within the party.

Back in 2013, Peevski's election as Bulgaria's Director of the State Agency for National Security triggered a series of massive protests that ended in June 2014 with the resignation of the entire government.

He has also been under British sanctions since 2021, when the UK government invoked Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions Regulations against him and two other notable Bulgarian figures over their involvement in corruption.

The two most significant political forces, Boyko Borissov's centre-right GERB party, which won 25% of the vote, and the pro-European liberal coalition We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB), which came second with 14.3%, have been struggling to form a government over calls to form a "cordon sanitaire" against Peevski.  

“The values of the DPS-Peevski faction are fundamentally incompatible with those of Renew Europe,” the group’s leader Valerie Hayer said in a statement Sunday, adding that she was recommending “the immediate exclusion of the DPS-Peevski party” from the group.

The Bureau of the ALDE had also unanimously voted Sunday on the expulsion of the DPS from the ALDE.

“A party led by an individual sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act has no place in our family,” ALDE Party President MEP Svenja Hahn said.