The Association of Bulgarian Employers' Organizations (AOBR) to impose a partial veto on the budget extension law for 2025. Specifically: business insists that the head of state return the part of the ZSPIR, which indexes salaries in the budget sector with inflation as of December 31.
The proposal was made by “We continue the change – Democratic Bulgaria“ and supported by the other parliamentary groups.
We will support Asen Vassilev's proposal, realizing all the risks it leads to in practice with regard to the country's public finances," said Denitsa Sacheva from GERB before the proposal was adopted.
Toshko Yordanov from ITN also stated at the time that the parliamentary group would accept it, even though it was illegal.
With a clear awareness of what nonsense he is proposing, we will support it, because the populism that is going on outside is inhumane and no one thinks about mothers and children," he said during a briefing.
Now the four business organizations – KRIB, AIKB, BIA and BCCI – indicate that the amendment is unconstitutional and violates the rights of Bulgarian citizens.
We rely on the experts in both institutions (they also send their position to the Ombudsman – ed. note) to deepen the analysis of unconstitutionality, as we assume that additional arguments in this direction may be found. Institutions and social partners must not allow populism in a pre-election situation to threaten the financial stability and constitutional foundations of the state's financial management, since once created, these dangerous precedents are proven to be repeated, but on an ever larger and more dangerous scale“, the business position reads.
It explains that the Public Finance Act regulates the so-called extended budget not to incur additional expenses and, accordingly, debts at the expense of the property and income of Bulgarian citizens until the restoration of trust, responsibility and the adoption of the State Budget Act for 2026.
The procedural provision (of Art. 3, para. 2) is in contradiction with a number of norms of the State Budget Act. This is also a direct violation of the provisions of the Law on Normative Acts (LA), which determines that “the law is a normative act that regulates… on the basis of the Constitution, public relations that are subject to permanent regulation, according to the subject or subjects of one or several institutes of law or their subdivisions“ (Art. 3, para. 1 of the LA). The State Budget Act is a structural law that strictly regulates the principles, rules and structure of the state budget and budgetary relations. In this sense, the annual state budgets, including those of the DOO and the NHIF, are drawn up and implemented in accordance with its provisions.
By adopting legislation in violation of Art. 87 of the ZPF, which is indisputable, the legislator acted not only in contradiction with the basic rules of the law, but also in violation of the constitutional principle of the rule of law, the rule of law and even the principle of popular sovereignty. Going beyond the scope of the framework defined by Art. 87, the norm in question also goes beyond the temporary and extraordinary regime of this provision. And this turns the exception into a rule, which is capable of suspending the rest of the legislation related to these public relations.
The Constitutional Court, with Decision No. 6 of 2001 in Constitutional Case No. 17/2000, accepted that the implementation of the state budget is a management function assigned to the Council of Ministers by the Basic Law, which means that the government acts in accordance with the State Budget Act. The implementation of the budget is expressed in the financing of the planned expenses, transfers and subsidies. The annual budget laws “in their expenditure part, contain provisions authorizing state bodies to make necessary expenditures from state funds up to a certain amount (Decision No. 17 of October 3, 1995 under Case No. 13/1995)
This practice of the Constitutional Court, contained in other of its acts, emphasizes the temporary, extraordinary and strictly restrictive nature of the so-called “extended“ budget laws, which in this case was grossly violated by the adoption of the procedural provision.
Probably out of pre-election populism and with a situational majority, the National Assembly added a one-time indexation of employees in the budget sector (whose salaries were already indexed for this year at the highest rate in the EU) with the accumulated annual inflation, which, depending on the interpretation and potential re-extension, could accumulate between 0.5 and 1 billion leva of new state debt, for which there is no basis and the caretaker government will not be authorized“, the position states.
Employers are of the opinion that such decisions should not be made by an outgoing parliament in the absence of a parliamentary majority, but by a clear majority that has elected a stable government. “The responsibility for such decisions in a pre-election situation remains unclear and vague, and each political figure wants to receive support from more voters on the basis of additional privileges for them in the budget, without taking into account financial discipline and responsibility, but only political populism.“
The norm of Art. 3, para. 2 of the ZSPIR creates a dangerous legal precedent of voluntaristic and unconstitutional adoption of legislation by the National Assembly, which raises serious concerns for the legal order and the rule of law in the state, as well as for the stability of public finances and the management of the deficit and public debt in the medium and long term.
Source: economic.bg