The decision of the Constitutional Court in practice legitimizes the lack of control and irresponsibility of the Attorney General and the centralization of power in his hands. The de facto status quo keeps the situation as it is for the foreseeable future.
Assoc. Daniel Smilov said this to FOCUS – specialist in comparative constitutional law.
With its decision, the Constitutional Court fixed the centralization of the Prosecutor's Office and the uncontrolled powers of the Prosecutor General. "The Attorney General retains a wide range of powers that enable him to intervene in the decision of each case. In practice, the prosecutor's office for a long time to come, at least until a Grand National Assembly is convened or until the doctrine of the Constitutional Court is changed, remains a centralized institution in which there is an excessive concentration of power in the hands of the chief prosecutor. The second thing that the Constitutional Court managed to do is that for a long time to come there is practically no external body on this institution to exercise any kind of control or to serve as a counterweight to the excessive powers given to the Prosecutor General by the Constitutional Court. One of the consequences of this decision is that whatever High Prosecutorial Council is made, the magistrates under the direct control of the Prosecutor General must be at least equal to those appointed by the National Assembly. I.e. the chief prosecutor, through his influence on the prosecutor's office and investigation, gets the opportunity to block every single decision of a body that supposedly should exercise some form of control and serve as a counterbalance to the powers of the chief prosecutor himself," Daniel Smilov explained.
The meaning of the constitutional reform, he said, was to give an initial push to show that there is a good will for change in the political forces. "What happened is that through the Constitutional Court, which, of course, compromises between major political players, these efforts were put to an end. In this situation, in practice, the chances of the pattern being reproduced are enormous. Not only are we at ground zero in terms of judicial reform, but we are minus 2-3 behind because the court has fixed and made impossible to change through simple constitutional amendments a number of positions that must be changed if we are to start any process of positive change“, the expert declared.
He noted that the Constitutional Court did not reject the change in the status of the caretaker government and the continuity of the work of the parliament when early elections were scheduled. The Constitutional Court split in its decision, which Smilov said leaves open the possibility that the Sixth Amendment could be attacked in the future. "There are already political forces that have said they will do it,”, he pointed out.
Regarding the reforms concerning the judicial system, the expert gave a categorically negative assessment of the decision of the Constitutional Court. "In practice, the court referred to a decision of its own from 2003 that is deeply problematic, if not wrong. The consequence of this decision is that the powers of the Grand National Assembly are increased at the expense of the Ordinary National Assembly through an inadmissible expansive interpretation of the term "form of state government". According to the Constitutional Court, this form of government hardly includes all changes in the balance of powers between the state bodies. So, for example, the Constitutional Court associates the change in the mandate of the chief prosecutor from 7 to 5 years with a change in the form of state government,“, Assoc. Smilov pointed out.
He noted that after the decision of the Constitutional Court, some of the reformers in the person of GERB and DPS tried to distance themselves from them and say that their hands were twisted. "That makes an impression. Still, it does no honor to someone who has signed certain amendments, not to have the dignity to come out and defend them in some way”, commented Daniel Smilov.