site.btaPresident Challenges Constitutionality of January 19 Constitutional Court Judges' Election

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has asked the Constitutional Court to declare unconstitutional the January 19, 2024 National Assembly resolutions on the election of Desislava Atanasova and Borislav Belazelkov as Constitutional Court (CC) judges, Radev's Press Secretariat said on Monday. The head of State argues that the newly elected CC members should not be sworn in before the CC itself has ruled on the compatibility of their election with the constitutional procedures and requirements.

According to Radev, the principles of openness, transparency, publicity and justification that the National Assembly is bound to observe when electing members of bodies of whom all or part are elected by it have been breached and "cannot be supplanted by pro forma debates and procedures seeking to legitimate an advance understanding among the ruling political forces".

The President sees "a deliberate attempt by the majority of National Representatives to circumvent the decisions of the Constitutional Court regarding the duration of the term of office". Radev recalls that disregarding CC decisions violates the Constitution itself. "Such an approach cannot be tolerated and poses a risk to the prestige of the Constitutional Court. Safeguarding this prestige is crucial for Bulgarian statehood," the President insists.

The parliamentary resolutions on Atanasova's and Belazelkov's election, which were gazetted on January 23, explicitly mention that they will serve standard nine-year terms in office. In an interpretative decision, however, which was issued acting on a petition from the President and became effective on January 20, the Constitutional Court ruled that the two should serve for seven years.

Assoc. Prof. Natalia Kiselova said on National Radio Monday morning that the nine-year term set in the resolutions is unconstitutional because the term begins as from the moment of taking the office, scheduled for January 26, whereas the CC decision took effect on January 20. According to the constitutional law expert, the rationale of the decision is that even though they were elected two years after the expiry of their predecessors' term in office, the two should serve for the remainder of the period after which the complement of the Court will have to be renewed.