What traps they set the changes in the Constitution when you were acting prime minister… Bilyana Gyaurova-Wegertseder from the Bulgarian Institute for Legal Initiatives (BIPI) spoke to FAKTI on the topic.
- Mrs. Giaurova, the Audit Chamber audits the activities of the government. As head of the Audit Office, Dimitar Glavchev became acting prime minister. Now one of the deputies in the Audit Chamber – Gorica Grancharova-Kozhareva, is a candidate for acting prime minister. Who will audit government spending… Toshko Todorov remained the second deputy in the Audit Chamber. Is that how it comes out…
? - The case with the Audit Chamber is very indicative of how in our country systematically works to depersonalize the institutions and reduce them to, roughly speaking, party departments. Your question about who will audit the executive now is very important because the Court is "baring" from the leadership corps. The members of the governing body are 5, and with the current situation, three will remain and they are not enough to be able to make decisions. Not to mention that they have an expired mandate. It should be recalled here that last year a procedure was launched to select a new leadership of the Audit Chamber, but this procedure "sunk" and was not brought to an end by the National Assembly. The other two organizations that issue members of the Audit Chamber are the Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Institute of Internal Auditors in Bulgaria. Last year they organized general meetings where they announced their new representatives and accordingly they were brought to the attention of the Chairman of the Audit Chamber. By law, he is obliged to submit these names to the National Assembly within three days. It can be verified, but I have no recollection of this happening.
- Did Dimitar Glavchev remain without a job after being acting prime minister and minister of foreign affairs at the same time?
- If we are talking about the return of Glavchev to the Audit Office, I think that as of today this is not possible, because he will not meet the requirement of incompatibility. The texts listed in the Law on the Chamber of Accounts, related to the criteria regarding the people who can lead the chamber, are not self-serving. It is not a random body and whoever runs it must meet the highest standards of integrity and independence. Otherwise, the regulation loses its meaning.
The fact that Mr. Glavchev combines 2 positions - that of acting Prime Minister and that of Foreign Minister, leads to a violation of the legal requirements for him to return to the head of the Audit Chamber.
In April, the parliament quickly changed the law on the BNB and the Audit Office to "open a loophole", creating exceptions in connection with the changes in the Constitution, but instead of writing eyebrows, it poked out eyes. The incompatibility clause is a precautionary wording, also valid at the time of restoration, to avoid a potential conflict of interest. There is no way to avoid such a situation. The Audit Chamber audits every single institution in the executive power, and you cannot put a person at its top who was in the executive power (in two positions), and while he was there, he also made a lot of personnel changes in various bodies of the executive power. which are also audited. If he returns to head the Audit Chamber, he will effectively be auditing himself, which is a serious violation of the requirement of independence.
Precisely in order to avoid similar unpleasant situations in the Law on the Audit Chamber, in art. 19, para. 1, item 3, it is provided that the powers of the chairman of the Audit Chamber are terminated ahead of schedule in case of incompatibility.
I think that we are currently in this hypothesis and the National Assembly must react adequately.
- In their desire to limit the powers of the president, what did the deputies do with the changes in the Constitution?
- In general, such a restriction is not necessarily bad. There are countries with similar regulations (Austria, Greece) where this works, but the list also includes a representative of the judiciary, resp. of the Constitutional Court. In Austria, for example, a few years ago the president of their Constitutional Court was appointed acting prime minister. Here, during the discussions on changes to the Constitution last year, there were also such proposals, but they did not remain in the final texts. If they were, maybe we wouldn't be in this situation now. To this we must also add the fact that some of the positions in this short list have either expired mandates (Audit Chamber) or are simply absent (Ombudsman and Deputy Ombudsman). With regard to the Ombudsman, I think we are the only Member State which for several months now has neither the head nor his deputy of this otherwise very important institution. I'm just reminding you that the Ombudsman is one of the people named in the Constitution who can appeal to the Constitutional Court. And so the short list gets even shorter to the point that the president is placed in an almost hopeless situation. I don't want to speculate whether this is a deliberate effect or not, but overall the general feeling is that more precision should have been sought in this change to the Constitution.
- International principles and standards also apply to an audit institution such as the Audit Office. Are they still valid in our country, or are we Bulgarianizing them?
- As I said above, the Audit Chamber is not an accidental institution. It is part of the so-called Supreme Audit Institutions to which international principles and standards apply. This is even recorded in the Law on the Audit Chamber, which already in art. 1 says that "The Audit Office controls the implementation of the budget and other public funds and activities in accordance with this law and internationally recognized auditing standards." Part of these standards include precisely increased requirements regarding independence and incompatibility. More specifically, standard 130 states the 5 principles on which the work of Supreme Audit Institutions is based - integrity, independence and objectivity, competence, professional attitude, confidentiality and transparency. In recent years, the Bulgarian Audit Office enjoyed a very high authority. However, it is worrying now what is happening to the Court and how this may affect the image of the institution, and not only that. An additional negative effect is the fact that Bulgaria has not yet appointed a representative to the European Court of Auditors.
- And finally it turns out that the deputies - in their desire to crush Radev, do and accept stupidity after stupidity… What changes are you still expecting?
- It is never too late to be surprised, and with a constantly working parliament, such as ours after the changes to the Constitution, surprises can be any kind. A pleasant one would be for the deputies to show wisdom and responsibility and start several important selection procedures - for the Ombudsman and deputy, for the chairman of the Audit Chamber, deputy and members, why not for members of the SJC. This will be a positive change.