Kiril Petkov

Kiril Petkov Petkov (Кирил Петков Петков; born 17 April 1980) is a Bulgarian politician, economist, and entrepreneur, who served as Prime Minister of Bulgaria from December 2021 to August 2022.

He is the co-leader of We Continue the Change, a political party he co-founded with Asen Vasilev.

Petkov was born on 17 April 1980, in Plovdiv.

He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in finance from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard University, where he was ranked in the top 10% of his class.

One of his lecturers was Michael Porter, with whom he specialized in the development of cluster strategies.

Petkov is one of the founders of the Center for Economic Strategies and Competitiveness at Sofia University (affiliated with Harvard University), where he has taught classes in economic development and microeconomics of competitiveness.

From 2001 to 2005, Petkov worked for the Canadian food company McCain Foods as a corporate development manager.

Since 2007, he has been developing projects in the field of high value-added innovation, and his company ProViotik holds several patents in biotechnology in the United States.

On 11 January 2017, Petkov was elected in the executive board of the newly formed political party Yes, Bulgaria!

From 12 May to 16 September 2021, Petkov served as Minister of Economy in the caretaker government of Stefan Yanev.

In his first television appearance as a minister, Petkov revealed that the state-controlled Bulgarian Development Bank had distributed 500 million euros in loans to just eight companies owned by four businessmen.

He condemned the practice as 'outrageous' and initiated an audit of how loans had been allocated.

On 19 September 2021, Petkov and Asen Vasilev launched their political project We Continue the Change (PP), an anti-corruption party seeking to be the uniting force that could bring all the other like-minded parties together to form a government.

Both had been popular ministers in the Yanev caretaker government, but originally met while studying at Harvard Business School.

On 27 October 2021, the Constitutional Court of Bulgaria retroactively overturned the decree appointing Petkov as Minister of Economy due to his status as a dual citizen, as the Constitution of Bulgaria states that ministers must only be Bulgarian citizens.

Although the position was retracted from him, his actions in the role were not nullified.

Political opponents of Petkov, which included Lozan Panov, a presidential candidate and chairman of the Supreme Court of Cassation of Bulgaria, called for action to be taken on the issue.

Petkov was previously a citizen of Canada, and stated that he had renounced his citizenship in April 2021, but Canadian government documents showed that the procedure was not officially completed until August 2021.

The November elections showed that PP had come first but without a majority of seats.

Petkov announced that his party would work will all parties who were willing to fight corruption in the country.

He later said he wanted to pursue "transparent" coalition negotiations with Democratic Bulgaria (DB) and There Is Such a People (ITN), and that he would be PP's nomination for prime minister, and wished to exclude DPS and GERB.

A series of talks on 18 policy areas were held between 23 November and 27 November, between the representatives of PP, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), ITN and DB.

On 10 December, the leaders of the four parties confirmed that they had reached a coalition agreement, and would form Bulgaria's first regular government since the election in April 2021.

Shortly after, President Rumen Radev announced that he had given the mandate to form a government to Petkov.

On 12 December, Petkov presented the composition of the incoming government, which was approved by the National Assembly on 13 December 2021.

Petkov was elected prime minister of Bulgaria in the Parliament of Bulgaria on 13 December 2021, with 134 votes in favour and 104 against, and his new government was appointed on the same day by President Rumen Radev.

On 19 March, Petkov was joined by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin to announce that the Port of Varna and Port of Constanța would be joined by road and railroad connections as well as by energy infrastructure, in an effort to increase military mobility in the region.

He said: "There will be a bridge over the Danube River... Logistics is just as important as military equipment... We can have really a working defense along the eastern flank [of NATO]."

In early June, Petkov's coalition partner, There Is Such a People, which had called for energy cooperation with Russia even after Gazprom cut off supplies to Bulgaria, withdrew from the coalition.

On 22 June, the government faced a motion of no confidence, which it lost.

Petkov formally resigned from his position as prime minister on 27 June, and was tasked by President Rumen Radev to form a new government.

Petkov's coalition collapsed in June 2022 after his government lost a vote of no confidence.

He left office on 2 August and was succeeded by the former minister of labor Galab Donev, in a caretaker government.

President Radev subsequently called for a snap election to be held on 2 October.

In the first week following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Petkov announced that Bulgaria would welcome Ukrainian refugees.

He stated, "These are not the refugees we are used to; these people are Europeans. These people are intelligent. They are educated people...This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists."

His statement drew widespread criticism and allegations of racism, with many highlighting the different treatment of past refugee waves.

In February, Petkov called for the resignation of Stefan Yanev from his position as Minister of Defense, after Yanev declined to use the word "war" in reference to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, instead referring to it as a "special operation", echoing language used by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yanev was dismissed at the beginning of March.

In May, Petkov recalled Bulgaria's ambassador to Russia, after Russian ambassador to Bulgaria Eleonora Mitrofanova drew a comparison between the war in Ukraine and Bulgaria's liberation from the Ottoman Empire.