Comments by political parties after the meeting of the Consultative Council on National Security

The Consultative Council on National Security (CCNS), convened by President Rumen Radev on August 16, discussed two main topics: financial measures for overcoming a potential health, social and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and measures to handle a growing migration pressure on Bulgaria through its border with Turkey, following the events in Afghanistan.

The main focus before and after the Council meeting was the need to update the budget.

Movement for Rights and Freedoms leader Mustafa Karadayi left the council early.He said it was for two reasons - first, because a foreign citizen was present and second, because the budget is being discussed and the place for discussion of the budget is in Parliament.

After the meeting, Desislava Atanasova of GERB said that consensus has not been reached.

"Consensus of the National Security Council has not been reached, there will be no general opinion expressed publicly, as all participants from the parliamentary groups believe that the topic of budget update, to which a large part of this council was dedicated is a topic to be debated in Parliament ".

Hristo Ivanov described the Council as an extremely informative discussion.

We discussed the whole system of crises facing Bulgaria, the institutional and financial aspects. In the end, the conclusion was that the final decision on the necessary update of the budget will be made in Parliament. Parliamentary forces there will express their final positions. But this was an extremely informative discussion and in this sense we, from Democratic Bulgaria, are grateful to the President for bringing us together," Ivanov added.

BSP leader kornelia Ninova said the CCNS had started with a scandal. She said that the participants were divided over whether he had the right to participate in such a meeting with a high degree of classified information regarding the case of Kiril Petkov's citizenship (refering to the issue with dual citizenship of caretaker Minister of Economy Kiril Petkov).

All representatives of parliamentary groups, with the exception of Hristo Ivanov, voted against Petkov remaining in the meeting. Heads of service voted for him to stay.

Ninova said BSP parliamentary group is strongly in favour of updating the budget, but with some changes.

Maya Manolova said that the parliamentary group of "Rise up BG. We are Coming" is supportive budget update. She explained that the caretaker Minister of Health has issued a report, according to which there will be no money after October for front-line doctors. There will not be enough funds for the treatment of Bulgarian citizens who get ill with Covid-19.

She said that together with Hristo Ivanov she voted for Kiril Petkov to remain in the meeting because the report he presented on the economic situation in the country is very important.

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Earlier today, the Constitutional Court initiated legal proceedings, at the request of 55 MPs of GERB-UDF, regarding the appointment of Kiril Petkov as Minister of Economy in the caretaker cabinet.

GERB-UDF parliamentary group submitted a request to the Constitutional Court for establishing a partial unconstitutionality of the appointment of the caretaker government. They ask the court to rule on whether the caretaker Economy Minister Kiril Petkov violated the Constitution if he had dual citizen at the time of his appointment.

"The question is whether this citizenship was valid at the time of his appointment. If he had dual citizenship, this means that the Constitution has been breached," Daniel Mitov added.

Minister Petkov stated that he had submitted an application for relinquishing his Canadian citizenship before taking office, but does not know if the procedure has been completed.

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