Bulgaria’s Parliament again rejects pro-Kremlin party’s ‘foreign agents’ bill

Bulgaria’s Parliament voted overwhelmingly on February 5 to reject a bill on “foreign agents” tabled by pro-Kremlin minority party Vuzrazhdane, the fifth time the legislature has rejected the bill.

The vote was 112 against, 38 in favour, with 48 abstentions.

Votes in favour came from Vuzrazhdane and four Bulgarian Socialist Party – United Left MPs, votes against came from 53 MPs for Boiko Borissov’s GERB-UDF, We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria and Delyan Peevski’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms – New Beginning.

Those abstaining included seven GERB-UDF MPs, six BSP – United Left MPs and the parliamentary groups of the Ahmed Dogan loyalists Democracy, Rights and Freedoms, ITN and Mech.

The bill proposed the registration of all persons who have received or are receiving foreign funding. It envisaged a public electronic register of “foreign agents” be created at the Ministry of Justice, to which persons obliged under this law would declare that they receive foreign funding within 15 days after the amount of funds received by them reaches the amount of 1000 leva.

In the three-hour debate on the bill, Vuzrazhdane leader Kostadin Kostadinov brandished a poster purporting to show that the United States had spent $431 million in Bulgaria and he claimed that this did not include America for Bulgaria Foundation funding as well as organizations that “give money under the table and above the table”.

Kostadinov then dwelt on his pet topic about journalists who were funded by foreign organizations, emphasizing that the goal of the bill is to weed out “real” journalists from those who “protect foreign interests”.

WCC-DB’s Kiril Petkov accused Vuzrazhdane of creating a distraction with “stupid laws” in a situation where the ruling majority was moving to replace heads of regulators.

WCC-DB’s Manol Peykov described the bill as “pure evil” and Kostadinov as a “miniature Sauron”, while WCC-DB’s Yavor Bozhaknov said that Vuzrazhdane MP Angel Yanchev had received funding from America for Bulgaria.

During debate, a confrontation between Kostadinov and WCC-DB MP Ivailo Mirchev led Speaker Natalya Kiselova to temporary suspend proceedings, the second suspension during the day’s sitting.

Earlier, there was a clash after it emerged that Varna mayor Blagomir Kotsev had sent a formal request to Kiselova for a reprimand of Kostadinov and Vuzrazhdane’s Kosta Stoyanov who a few days ago stormed Kotsev’s office demanding an explanation for fines imposed on Vuzrazhdane activists in Varna.

A declaration read out by WCC-MP Stella Nikolova called for the parliamentary ethics committee to punish Kostadinov and MPs from his group.

“It is not the first time that the pro-Putin party Vuzrazhdane is behaving like punks from the 90s. The aggression, the threats, the insults, the movement of packs to have a numerical advantage – this is another planned and extremely repulsive hooliganism by Kostadin Kostadinov and his subordinates,” Nikolova said.

Kiselova reprimanded Kostadinov for shouting insults at Nikolova.

The BSP-United Left group issued a declaration condemning the behaviour in the House.

“Such vandalistic and scoundrel-like behavior is absolutely unacceptable for the institution we are in – the Bulgarian Parliament. In addition to undermining the prestige of the institution, which prestige and rating are already under all kinds of criticism, we are also destroying Bulgarian democracy,” the BSP – United Left’s Gabriel Valkov said.

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