The National Assembly rejected in the second reading the texts by the submitter of the Bill on representative claims for the protection of the collective interests of consumers, submitted by the Council of Ministers on April 13, 2023, adopted at the first vote on February 29, 2024. The bill was included in the agenda order at the request of the "BSP for Bulgaria". Today is the first Wednesday of the month and according to the Rules of the National Assembly, parliamentary groups can make proposals for the inclusion of bills to be considered on their merits.
Initially, the only proposal that was accepted in the plenary hall was related to changing the name of the draft law - Law on protection of collective interests of consumers. The proposal was made by the People's Representative from “We continue the change – Democratic Bulgaria“ Nadezhda Yordanova. She subsequently withdrew the rest of the proposals she made between first and second reading, saying she refused to engage in legislative "Frankenstein". Rositsa Kirova refused to lead the meeting on this point due to the lack of a second reading report from the lead committee on legal issues.
After a series of breaks and a statement on behalf of a group in defense of the draft law, consideration of the item continued with the reading of the texts by mover and change of the leader of the meeting. Nikola Minchev proposed the voting of the texts of the draft law en bloc. They were all rejected. Thus, according to his words, an internal contradiction was reached, which was expressed in the fact that the name of the law has been adopted, but not a single text has been adopted. He put the name of the bill to a vote again, pointing out that this is also the practice of the Constitutional Court when there is an internal contradiction. The previously adopted name of the bill was also rejected with 14 votes “for“, 76 – “against“ and 59 – “against“. After the rejection of the name, Minchev pointed out that with this the bill was rejected in a second vote.
In a vote that differed from the general one, Toma Bykov from GERB-SDS summarized today's result, pointing out that today the deputies presented themselves and did not produce anything. The credit goes to political stupidity. Everyone in this room was operating on the principle of political stupidity. All parties in Bulgaria lose their votes because of days like this and, unfortunately, these days are becoming more and more, added Bykov. His colleague Rositsa Kirova also stated that she voted in favor of the bill because she is convinced that the rights of consumers must be protected. Today a bill fell victim to the form, we killed the substance with the way we decided to vote. In haste, there was a danger of accepting texts that were not even accurately translated, Kirova added. She drew attention to the fact that a proposal was made to the left - to hold a working committee, to hold a meeting of the legal committee so that the bill could be considered. This lesson will be at the expense of Bulgarian citizens and will be quite expensive, added Rositsa Kirova.
According to Toshko Yordanov, chairman of the PG "There is such a people", what happened today is the reason why Bulgarian citizens think that there are only idiots in this building. He concluded that the parliament was full of “little souls who only think about their noses”.
Cornelia Ninova, chairman of the PG of the "BSP for Bulgaria" asked the rulers if they are not embarrassed to teach and moralize after this law has been sitting on the desks of the rulers for the last one year. There is no working group, no committee report. This battle with mobile operators, with monopolies BSP has been fighting for six years, regardless of whether we are in power or opposition, and there is nothing to stop us, Ninova said.
Rositsa Kirova reminded that the deadline for proposals expired five days ago, and the deadline for the commission to come up with a report is 15 days, and there can be no talk of any violations by the commission.
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