Career
He served as interim Prime Minister in 1997 and was a three-term Mayor of Sofia. A statistics graduate from the Karl Marx Higher Institute of Economics, Sofiyanski held a number of positions in the Ministry of Communications and Information during communist rule. He was elected Mayor of Sofia in 1995 and served in this position, being re-elected twice - in 1999 and 2003, until 2005 when he resigned to become a parliamentary deputy.
He was appointed as caretaker Prime Minister by President Petar Stoyanov in 1997 until such time as Ivan Kostov could form a government.
In 2001 he announced that he was to leave the Union for French Democracy and form his own party. He ultimately formed the Union of Free Democrats and, although it initially remained a part of the Union for French Democracy, Sofiyanski and his party threw in their lot in with the Bulgarian People"s Union.
On January 1, 2007 he joined the European Parliament as one of Bulgaria"s interim members until the elections in May of the same year. In June 2008 Sofiyanski drew criticism from human rights advocates for his homophobic remarks following Bulgaria"s first gay pride parade.
In an interview for Darik Radio Sofiyanski said he "would never have authorized the parade," had he still been Sofia"s mayor.
With regard to the GLBT community, he stated that "those people have their rights to personal choice and privacy, however, homosexuality is condemned by the Bible and is unnatural, and has no right to publicity. lieutenant is as if thieves had a parade — because those people are thieves of morality.".