Bulgaria enters election campaign with Parliament sitting ending in debacle
Bulgaria begins its official election campaign period at midnight on September 27, a day after what was billed as the final sitting of the 50th National Assembly ended in a debacle that could cost the country billions of euro in lost funds.
The country’s early parliamentary elections, the seventh time in three years that Bulgarians elect a legislature, are scheduled for October 27. It remains to be seen whether these elections produce a National Assembly that will elect a government.
While the constitution as amended in 2023 provides for a National Assembly to remain in office until the members of its successor are sworn in, Parliament’s rules provide that it does not sit during an official election campaign period.
What had been scheduled as the final sitting of the 50th National Assembly on September 26 turned into a chaotic late-night drama as MPs from pro-Kremlin party Vuzrazhdane and populist ITN disrupted proceedings to prevent debate and voting on a decision on the updated roadmap on climate neutrality and amendments to the Recovery and Resilience Plan regarding the low-carbon economy aspect and REPowerEU sections.
Not only were there a succession of failed attempts to secure a quorum, but MPs from those two parties physically obstructed access to the lectern.
When energy committee head Delyan Dobrev attempted to speak from his seat, MPs from those two parties vandalised the sound system.
At one point, Movement for Rights and Freedoms parliamentary group leader Delyan Peevski – whose party supports the proposed amendments – moved up to the lectern, placed an arm around ITN MP Toshko Yordanov, and spoke to him, though with the audio system off, it is not known what transpired between them.
Vuzrazhdane and ITN, along with the Bulgarian Socialist Party which also helped to deny the sitting a quorum, oppose provisions concerning the Maritsa East mining complex, where they want to “protect jobs”.
Preventing the sitting from proceeding resulted in not only processing the decision related to the RRP, but also a vote on whether or not to accept President Roumen Radev’s veto on amendments to the Bar Act, which he announced on September 20.
“With this circus that unfolded in the plenary hall, we lost many billions of European funds, irretrievably,” Dobrev said.
Movement for Rights and Freedoms MP Stanislav Anastasov said: “We are talking about 500 million specifically for miners and energy workers. The absurd thing is that there were votes for this to pass in the hall and it didn’t get to that point because of this sabotage by the parties”.
GERB-UDF leader Boiko Borissov, speaking on September 27, said: “If GERB wins the elections convincingly, I will be able to renegotiate the money under the Recovery Plan and get it back. Again with the same election results, we have to collect those few billions that we lost now to do what the Green Deal requires”.
Borissov said that the money that Bulgaria would have got from the European funds was intended to provide funds to the worker and rehabilitate the land.
“No one in Brussels wants to close the Maritsa today, even more so when the war in Ukraine is in this mode,” he said.
“Just some money, half a billion of which should go to the state to complete the Maritsa work, the other few billion should be for social activities, so that no miner and worker would be harmed, but would be trained to work in the new facilities,” he said.
We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria co-leader Assen Vassilev said that Vuzrazhdane and ITN had had no arguments, “so they cut the cables and pushed around the quaestors”. The actions by these parties were “complete vandalism,” Vassilev said.
It was not immediately clear whether a special sitting of the 50th National Assembly will be convened during the election campaign period, and if it is, whether it would secure a quorum to transact business.
Please support The Sofia Globe’s independent journalism by becoming a subscriber to our page on Patreon:
Become a Patron!
