site.btaUPDATED Radev vs. Peevski, Denkov: Amended Constitution, Schengen Entry, Powerholders' Performance

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev and Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) Floor Leader Delyan Peevski on Friday exchanged verbal fire regarding the amendments to the Constitution and Bulgaria's Schengen entry, the amendments to the Constitution and the powerholders' performance in general. Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov also responded to the head of State.

Schengen

Radev called on the Government to ensure Bulgaria's full accession to Schengen by January 1, 2024. He recalled that a caretaker cabinet he appointed had achieved a to-the-point commitment to the country's admission in October and regretted that "this impetus was not pursued".

"The Government owes an explanation for harming the national interest and sabotaging our full-fledged European integration," the President argued. He blamed powerholders for raising obstacles along this path and wasting two months, referring to an energy contribution on Russian natural gas import into and transit via Bulgaria that Parliament introduced, effective October 13, 2023. On December 18 the measure was repealed retroactively after Hungary threatened to veto Bulgaria's Schengen entry unless this was done. Radev said he had decreed the promulgation of this law, and it was indeed gazetted on Friday.

"Regrettably, this did not come as a result of [the pro-government majority] coming to their senses but of a diplomatic scandal and pressure on the part of Hungary," he commented. He described this policy of the powerholders as "absurd" and as "decapitalizing Bulgartransgaz, failing to add even a penny to budget revenue and, on the contrary, discrediting Bulgaria as an unreliable partner in Europe."

The President said that he will not veto the 2024 State Budget Act, which Parliament adopted conclusively on Thursday.

Constitution

Regarding the amendments to the Constitution which admitted holders of dual nationality to run for Parliament and be elected cabinet members and prime ministers, Radev explained that when he argued in favour of allowing dual nationals to run for parliament and president in a statement in 2019, he had in mind native-born Bulgarians who are citizens of EU Member States and not what he called "Bulgarian-passport-holding foreigners". The President also sees a difference between the security environment then and its "dramatic deterioration now." In his opinion, "the powerholders either are unaware of the risks to which they expose us or are making these changes for particular people, "say, as an advance exculpation of people who are currently in governance, in the Cabinet, in Parliament, or otherwise they already have certain people in mind to enter governance upon a rotation or in a next parliament."

"A number of countries are tightening their migration policy and citizenship granting as a result of an assessment of the geopolitical changes. From now on, we will be doing just the opposite: we are opening the doors wide to foreigners holding Bulgarian passports to the country's governance and Parliament," Radev pointed out.

At a meeting with expat Bulgarians in New York in 2019, the President went on record as saying: "We must open a debate on constitutional and legal revisions enabling native-born Bulgarians who have acquired dual nationality in EU Member States and, why not, in advanced democracies like the US, Canada and Switzerland, to run for Parliament, President and Vice President, as it the case in most advanced countries."

According to Radev, the latest amendments to the Constitution will lead to crises. He reiterated that he will challenge them before the Constitutional Court.

Powerholders' Performance

"We should keep in mind something important: political hypocrisy comes at a cost. This cost is paid by citizens and business rather than by politicians," Radev commented further. "Until recently, the leaders of Democratic Bulgaria and Continue the Change were bent over backwards trumpeting that [GERB leader Boyko] Borissov and Peevski are synonymous with corruption, mafia and backstage scams and must be kept far from powers if Bulgaria is to be a democracy committed to the rule of law, fully integrated into Europe. Now they govern together, rape the Constitution together and claim that together they will rescue us from corruption. This stinks so much that the stench reaches those who are looking for a pretext to trip us on our way to Schengen," the President said.

Peevski Strikes Back

"I followed closely Radev's statement and realized how important it was to amend the Constitution so as to have really a parliamentary republic in the full sense of the word," Peevski said later on Friday, quoted by his party in a press release.
 
"President Radev's words revealed the irritation of a self-deluded power monger who has been deprived of unlimited power, who, by his single-handed rule, by his uncontrolled caretaker cabinets, plunged the country into a political and economic crisis out of which we, thankfully, brought Bulgaria by the Euro-Atlantic majority in Parliament," the MRF Floor Leader's statement reads. "By the revisions to the Constitution, we guaranteed that there will be never a potentate detrimental to the people and the State," he added.

"When President Radev is speaking of corruption, he should first look at himself and around him," Peevski argued. He called on the President "to turn the light to the presidential institution, and then people will see some very interesting and nasty things."

On June 2, 2021, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Peevski for his extensive role in corruption in Bulgaria. OFAC described him as "an oligarch who previously served as a Bulgarian MP and media mogul and has regularly engaged in corruption, using influence peddling and bribes to protect himself from public scrutiny and exert control over key institutions and sectors in Bulgarian society. In September 2019, Peevski actively worked to negatively influence the Bulgarian political process in the October 27, 2019, municipal elections. Peevski negotiated with politicians to provide them with political support and positive media coverage in return for receiving protection from criminal investigations."

Peevski has filed a lawsuit in a US court, demanding his removal from the Magnitsky list. His lawyers argue that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by his client and that the US administration has so far failed to provide such evidence to his lawyers, despite repeated requests to do so. The position of his legal representatives is that this is a substantial violation, which makes the sanction unlawful and violates Peevski's right to a defence.

PM's Comments 

Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov said later in the day that he was clear that the President is a stakeholder regarding the constitutional amendments related to the caretaker cabinet. "There is a clear reason why these revisions were made: under the circumstances we had over the last two years, caretaker cabinets proved to be running the country during long periods of time without parliamentary oversight, including by assuming long-term commitments, tasks, treaties, which is not the object of a caretaker cabinet," the PM said. In his words, the object of a caretaker cabinet is to organize fair elections. "Many other countries do not have a caretaker cabinet," he recalled.

Denkov sees the President's comments with regard to the Constitution as "reflecting a certain partiality in favour of the caretaker cabinet." "These amendments have been consulted with the Venice Commission and the European Commission. If somebody believes that the European Commission 'rapes' the Constitution, let him say this clearly," the Prime Minister emphasized.

Continue the Change

Continue the Change (CC) co-leader Kiril Petkov commented on bTV the President was well aware that the political competition created in the last few months had yielded good results, including the constitutional amendments, the 2024 State Budget Act with transparent capital expenditures, and the termination of the prosecution service's permanent power. The President is also aware that the judicial system was changed after failing to ensure justice to the Bulgarians for 33 years [since the democratic changes began at the end of 1989], Petkov said. Also, Radev is aware that this is the first time the Netherlands Parliament has voted in favour of Bulgaria becoming a full member of the Schengen border-free area in one step.

Petkov said the alternative to Bulgaria's present government of the informal power-sharing coalition of CC-Democratic Bulgaria and GERB-UDF, backed by the MRF, would be a sixth, seventh and eighth caretaker cabinet.

Democratic Bulgaria

Later in the day, MP Ivaylo Mirchev of Democratic Bulgaria commented on Nova Television that President Radev "had got on the bandwagon" for Schengen.

"Rumen Radev has been President since 2016, and I can't recall what his caretaker cabinets have done for our Schengen entry. We have been technically ready for that back since 2011. President Radev is now climbing on this bandwagon, claiming that he all but negotiated our accession, but this is not true. The whole job was done by the Denkov-Gabriel Cabinet and by the majority leaders in the National Assembly," the PM argued.