According to the Constitutional Court, the former Speaker of the National Assembly Natalia Kiselova unlawfully stopped the referendum on the euro requested by President Rumen Radev.
The court was approached by the head of state with a request to interpret the powers of the Speaker of Parliament, after Kiselova did not allow his proposal for a national referendum on the issue - whether the single European currency should be introduced in Bulgaria from January 1 next year - to be discussed in the plenary hall.
The decision of the Constitutional Court:
With 11 votes "for", one dissenting opinion - by Borislav Belazelkov, and two opinions by Sonya Yankulova and Atanas Semov, the Constitutional Court decided that the Speaker of the National Assembly did not right to assess the admissibility and rejection of a request for a national referendum made by an entity authorized by law.
This power belongs solely to the National Assembly and the "appropriation" by the parliamentary speaker is "particularly intolerable and has the potential to empty the supremacy of the Constitution in the exercise of state power, since its acts are not subject to control".
According to the constitutional judges, unlike the parliament, its speaker does not represent an independent state body within the framework of the separation of powers, although he has some of his own powers.
The decision recalls that back in 1992 the court explained that the main thing in the powers of the speaker of the National Assembly is that they are directed primarily to the organization and activity of the National Assembly, as well as that he has specific representative functions.
The will of the Grand National Assembly is also cited, that he is "first among equals" and has no right to unilateral acts on issues that the Constitution has preserved as the competence of the collective body.
The judges note that this also fully applies to the power to decide to hold a national referendum, noting that a unilateral assessment by the Speaker of the National Assembly of issues for a national referendum would thwart the direct exercise of state power by the sovereign as an option expressly provided for in the Basic Law.
The interpretative decision was reached at the request of President Rumen Radev, who on May 9, 2025, announced that he proposed holding a national referendum, but his proposal never reached the plenary hall.
Whether this will happen now depends on the actions of the head of state, who can either ask the deputies to vote on the proposal he submitted, or submit a new one in the same sense, or take no action in view of the little more than a month remaining before Bulgaria enters the eurozone.