Bulgaria Appoints New EU Affairs Minister

The Bulgarian parliament appointed Gergana Grancharova as the Balkan country's new European affairs minister

The Bulgarian parliament appointed Gergana Grancharova as the Balkan country's new European affairs minister on Friday after her predecessor, Meglena Kuneva, became a EU consumer protection commissioner on Jan 1.

Some 157 deputies from the 240-strong chamber voted in favour of deputy foreign minister Grancharova, 33, for the post and 54 were against.

"Choosing a new EU affairs minister demonstrates our will to meet the new challenges in the European Union," Stanishev said ahead of the vote. Bulgaria joined the EU at the start of 2007.

Soft-spoken Grancharova, a senior member of junior coalition NMS party, was a deputy foreign minister in the previous cabinet of ex-king Simeon Saxe Coburg. A lawyer, she will be the youngest minister in the Socialist-led government. Her appointment ends political bickering between governing partners, where the NMS demanded it should nominate a minister to replace Kuneva, also an NMS member, while the Socialists argued the post should either be closed or handed to them.