Bulgarian President Radev vetoes bill giving expanded powers for Lukoil special administrator
Bulgarian President Roumen Radev said on November 12 that he vetoed amendments to the country’s law regulating operations in the oil and oil products industry, which expanded the powers of special representatives appointed to manage assets deemed of critical importance.
Although the amendments at no point refer to the assets of Russian oil major Lukoil, which owns the Lukoil Neftochim oil refinery in Bourgas and an extensive network of petrol stations through Lukoil Bulgaria, the motives tabled by the bill’s sponsors specifically point out that the changes were aimed specifically at those companies.
Lukoil became subject of US sanctions last month, but the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) gave affected companies until November 21 to carry out all necessary transactions and transfers, setting a hard deadline for Bulgarian authorities to find a way for the refinery to continue operations.
Radev said in his veto motives that the bill passed by Parliament last week removes a number of legal protections that were previously in the law, such as the limit on the time that the special administrator can be appointed for (and a limit on extending that time), the availability of court appeals and a ban on certain operations with the assets of the companies where a special administrator was appointed.
The bill’s provisions “expand the powers of the special administrator in an unacceptable manner, removing all those guarantees of protection of the rights of companies and individuals that might be affected by the special administrator’s activities,” Radev said in his veto motives.
This risked to bring reputational and financial damages for Bulgaria, which faced the prospect of restitution claims from the affected companies, Radev said.
Taken as a whole, the bill envisions the indirect nationalisation of companies and the possibility that they could be then transferred to third parties, which “opens wide the door to arbitrariness and malfeasance”, breaching a number of constitutional principles and international legal norms, he said.
Bulgaria’s constitution grants the head of state a limited power of veto, through enabling the President to return legislation to the National Assembly for further discussion.
The National Assembly may overturn the President’s veto through a simple majority vote or accept the veto and review the vetoed clauses. Since taking office in January 2017, Radev made liberal use of the power and this was his 46th vetoed bill.
He has used this power especially frequently in recent weeks, this being the sixth veto he imposed since October 14.
The National Assembly overturned the veto on all but eight occasions – seven times the veto was accepted by MPs and, in the other case, the government coalition at the time failed to muster the support needed to overturn it.
(Roumen Radev photo: president.bg)
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