Bid by pro-Russian party to scrap Bulgaria’s defence cooperation agreement with Ukraine ends without a vote

A bid by minority pro-Russian party for Bulgaria’s Parliament to vote to compel the caretaker government to cancel the 10-year defence cooperation agreement with Ukraine came to nothing on April 1 when the National Assembly lost its quorum.

As The Sofia Globe reported on March 30, Bulgaria’s caretaker Prime Minister Andrei Gyurov and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed on March 30 a 10-year defence cooperation agreement during Gyurov’s visit to Kyiv.

The step was criticised by Bulgarian President Iliyana Yotova, Vuzrazhdane, the Bulgarian Socialist Party – United Left and, outside Parliament, ex-president Roumen Radev, who is leading his Progressive Bulgaria coalition in the country’s April 19 parliamentary elections.

The draft decision tabled by Vuzrazhdane was added to Parliament’s Order Paper for its April 1 special sitting with the support of all parliamentary groups except We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria and some MPs from the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms.

The draft decision called for the caretaker government to cancel the agreement and gave it 15 days to report to Parliament on the property, defence and other consequences of the agreement.

On March 31, a statement on the government website said that the agreement did not fall within the scope of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties because it did not contain legally binding commitments, but rather opportunities for further development of joint defence capabilities.

The announcement included a link to a pdf copy, in Bulgarian, of the 20-page agreement.

In Parliament on April 1, after about an hour of debate, a succession of checks showed that the House was not quorate and the sitting was adjourned.

In 2024, when Dimitar Glavchev was caretaker Prime Minister, it was announced that the interim government had approved the defence cooperation agreement, but Glavchev said that he would not sign it without the consent of Parliament.

Glavchev tabled the agreement in Parliament, which refused to consider it because it fell within the competence of the government, not the legislature.

The Rossen Zhelyazkov government took no action on the matter.