site.btaCC-DB, GERB, MRF Leaders Propose Amendments in Parliament's Rules of Procedure Concerning Security Services Oversight Committee

GERB leader Boyko Borissov, Continue the Change (CC) co-leader Kiril Petkov, Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) floor leader and Democratic Bulgaria (DB) co-leader Atanas Atanassov have submitted on Monday a draft decision on amendments and additions to the rules of procedure of the Parliament, affecting the parliamentary committee that oversees the security services, the application and use of special intelligence means and the data under the Electronic Communications Act, a BTA check on National Assembly’s official website showed.

The proposed amendments

The proposal is that the committee "should be constructed and run on the model of the other parliamentary committees, namely with an elected chairperson and a membership formed on the principle laid down in Article 18(1) of the Rules of Organization and Procedure of the National Assembly, the petitioners wrote.

Article 18 (1) states the following: “In determining the composition of the Standing Committees, the ratio between the number of Parliamentary Groups shall be preserved…” However, it also points out that the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and the Committee for Control of the Security Services are exceptions and the rule does not apply to them.

According to the current rules, the committee in question is chaired on a rotating basis for one parliamentary session according to the number of parliamentary groups. It is formed on a parity basis, as is the Committee on Constitutional Affairs.

The proposed amendments retain the parity principle only for the Constitutional Affairs Committee.

Argumentation

The authors of the draft amendment to the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly point out that "the current arrangements for the formation and election of the leadership of the Committee for the Control of the Security Services, namely the parity in numbers and the alternation of the chairmanship by the parliamentary groups, make it ineffective and dysfunctional".

“The Commission does not hold its meetings regularly, does not review and submit reports on reports and bills, and is often deliberately boycotted by certain parliamentary groups in order to be unable to gather a quorum and to hold a meeting on important and topical issues,” Borisov, Petkov, Peevski and Atanassov argue in the document.

The rotation of the chairmanship leads to frequent changes of the committee's priorities and the order of the draft legislation and hearings of certain security services, the reasoning also says.

"Left to function as it is, the committee will be unable to pass the necessary bills and hold periodic hearings on issues of national relevance,“ the four authors of the draft decision wrote.

At the end of last week, members of the parties in the majority in Parliament Friday made it clear they are unhappy with having a representative of the nationalist Vazrazhdane party head the parliamentary committee that oversees the security services and the use of special surveillance means.