Bulgarian Parliament appoints Orlin Kolev as Constitutional Court judge
Bulgaria’s National Assembly voted on March 20 to appoint Orlin Kolev as Constitutional Court judge to replace Konstantin Penchev.
The motion to elect Kolev passed with 127 MPs in favour, 104 opposed and two abstaining. Kolev’s appointment was backed by the three parties in the ruling coalition – GERB-UDF, populist ITN and BSP-United Left.
Ahmed Dogan’s ARF voted against, but Delyan Peevski’s splinter Movement for Rights and Freedoms – New Beginnings supported Kolev’s nomination.
Kolev, a constitutional law professor at St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia University, was one of two candidates, the other being former European Court for Human Rights judge Yonko Grozev.
The motion to appoint Grozev only drew 38 votes in favour, mainly from the WCC-DB group that nominated him, and 190 opposed, with five abstaining.
Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court has 12 sitting judges, appointed for nine-year terms, without an option for a second one. They are appointed by all three branches of government – four by Parliament, four by the president and four by the joint assembly of the judges in the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court.
Every three years, four judges are replaced – most recently in 2024, when the list included one appointed by Parliament (Penchev, to be replaced by Kolev), one elected by their fellow judges (Tanya Raikovska, replaced by Galina Toneva-Dacheva) and two appointed by the president (Mariana Karagyozova-Finkova and Filip Dimitrov, replaced by Nevin Osman-Yordanova and Sasho Penov).
The other three judges took their oaths of office in November.
(Photo: Yonko Grozev, left, and Orlin Kolev, right, during the debate in the National Assembly on the appointment of a new Constitutional Court judge. Photo: parliament.bg)
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