site.btaUPDATED Parliament Adopts Resolution on Financial Stability and Fiscal Liquidity

Late Wednesday night, the National Assembly passed a draft resolution on ensuring the financial stability and fiscal liquidity of the Republic of Bulgaria, moved by Jordan Tzonev MP of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms and Temenuzhka Petkova of GERB-UDF. The vote was 131 in favour.

Under the resolution, Finance Minister Assen Vassilev must immediately suspend all expenditure under the consolidated financial programme with the exception of spending on pensions, wages, urgent social payments and maturing public debt payments until the appointment of a caretaker cabinet. The resolution further requires from the Minister of Finance to submit to the National Assembly, by April 9, 2024, a complete report on the available liquidity and planned expenditure for the April 4 - April 10 period.

Petkova said that the resolution was intended to minimize the risk of inappropriate expenditure of public funds. Nikola Minchev MP of Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) stated that this resolution on procedural, organizational and technical matters should not be allocated to relevant committee but should go through a standing committee.

Parliament sat for more than 15 hours and adjourned half hour past midnight.

On Thursday, the CC-DB Parliamentary Group issued a declaration describing the resolution stopping part of the Finance Minister's settlements seeks to bring a lot of public systems for a halt for at least a week. As an example, the Group cites the hospital for disabled children in Kotel (Southeastern Bulgaria), which has been disconnected from power supply, cannot pay its staff and will cease operation because the Finance Ministry is unable to finance the hospital.

"The resolution practically halts the implementation of the State budget in an essential part which is a responsibility of the Minister of Finance," the declaration states. "The 2024 budget was adopted by GERB and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and those same MPs are now barring the Minister of Finance from effecting the budget payment they themselves legislated. The ultimate goal is to sabotage entry into the Schengen area and the eurozone after this objective has been pursued for 17 years, including during 12 years of GERB in government, owing to a fear that the CC-DB Government has done the job which GERB has failed to do so far."

According to the CC-DB Parliamentary Group, the resolution was adopted in breach of the Rules of Organization and Procedure of the National Assembly without reasoning and is obviously unconstitutional.