The pro-European majority Bulgarian parliament rejected the pro-Russian radical Vazrazhdane party’s proposal for a referendum on a 20-year postponement of Bulgaria’s membership in the Eurozone on Friday, but the issue will now be referred to the Constitutional Court.
The Vazrazhdane party’s initiative – which asked if people agreed that the Bulgarian lev should be the only official currency in Bulgaria until 2043 – was supported by 470,000 Bulgarians who signed the proposal for a referendum, but the vote can not be held without the approval of the parliament.
“You will try to sweep a referendum without any legal justification. Do not trample on the most democratic principle, especially calling yourself democrats,” Deyan Nikolov, Vazrazhdane MP, chairman of the Initiative Committee for the referendum, told his colleagues in the Parliament.
The law says that 200,000 signatures must be collected for a proposal to hold the referendum to be submitted to parliament. If the signatures are over 400,000, the National Assembly must decide to hold it.
Nevertheless, 98 MPs from the pro-European coalition PP-DB and the Turkish minority party DPS voted against it, arguing that it would be unconstitutional. The initiative of Vazrazhdane received support from 68 MPs from Vazrazhdane, the socialist party BSP, and the populist ITN. A total of 45 MPs voted abstained, most of them from the GERB party of long-time prime minister Boyko Borissov.
Until recently, the leader of GERB, Borissov, hesitated on how his party should vote because he did not want to spoil his relations with the leader of Vazrazhdane Kostadin Kostadinov, EURACTIV Bulgaria’s partner dnevnik.bg reported. Therefore, an “abstention” vote was chosen so as not to close the door to a possible future joint governance formula and because of the high political cost this decision could entail.
Vazrazhdane called on President Rumen Radev to appeal to the Constitutional Court about the admissibility of the issue. While it is not very likely that the president would send the issue to the Constitutional Court, the pro-Russian party, together with the ITN party, has the necessary signatures to do so.
PP-DB deputy Vasil Pandov said that Vazrazhdane had deliberately misled people with the “protection of the Bulgarian lev” campaign they conducted while collecting signatures.
“The voice of the people must be heard, but the voice of the law is stronger. This means democracy and the rule of law,” former justice minister and now PP-DB Nadezhda Yordanova added.
“With this referendum, you are doing more politics, using the fears of the Bulgarians by saying that prices will rise if we adopt the euro. It does you no honour to gain 3-4-5-thousand votes extra. I do not respect your political attitude behind this referendum,” Branimir Balachev from GERB told the Vazrazhdane MPs.
“Because we left a vacuum, it filled with fear. Being on a currency board, we have been operating in the same conditions for 30 years that we will operate in the Eurozone. The introduction of the euro will only bring benefits because the negatives have already been consumed,” deputy chairman of DPS Yordan Tsonev said.
Bulgaria agreed to become a member of the Eurozone with its entry into the EU in 2007. The government intends for this to happen from 1 January 2025. Bulgaria is currently in the waiting room of the Eurozone (the ERM II mechanism) and could be accepted at any moment.
(Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg)
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