site.btaParliament Rejects TISP's Motion to Ease Conduct of Referendums

Bulgaria's National Assembly on Thursday voted, 81-30 with 80 abstentions, to reject on first reading amendments to the Direct Citizen Participation in State and Local Government Act, moved by There Is Such a People (TISP), which were intended to ease the conduct of referendums.

TISP proposed the introduction of a uniform approach to determining the minimum number of signatures that should be collected on a proposal to hold a national and local referendum. The existing version of the law requires 200,000 signatures of enfranchised citizens to submit a proposal for a national referendum and 400,000 such signatures to oblige the National Assembly to adopt a resolution on holding a proposed referendum. The revised version would have changed this minimum to a ratio of the total of enfranchised citizens: one-fortieth and one-twentieth, respectively.

The second group of amendments would have lowered the thresholds for validity of the referendums, providing for the same threshold for both types, and would have eliminated the threshold for determining the results of the two types of referendums.

The third group would have eased the technological rules for the sign-in for both types of referendums. It was proposed to drop the requirement for signers to state a permanent address in the case of a national referendum and to keep this requirement in the case of a local referendum. The bill would have also increased the time limit for the collection of signatures to six months for a national referendum and to five months for a local referendum from three months in both cases at present.