President of Constitutional Court: The Court's work on the election case is being hindered

The Constitutional Court cannot make a final decision on the case challenging the election results. This was made clear in a statement by the President of the Constitutional Court, Pavlina Panova, broadcasted on BNT on March 10, in accordance with Article 52 of the Radio and Television Act.

Pavlina Panova noted that in recent days, the Constitutional Court had fulfilled all additional requests from the Central Election Commission (CEC). However, despite this, the Commission has not completed the task assigned to it, which was to recalculate the election results to determine if there would be any change in the distribution of seats in the 51st Parliament.

Here is the full statement by Pavlina Panova, President of the Constitutional Court:

"The current proportional electoral system in our country does not allow the court, when checking the election results, to determine violations of the law that could lead to changes in the composition of the newly elected National Assembly, and to decide which MPs' elections are invalid due to those violations.

The Constitutional Court can do so only after the calculations made by the Central Electoral Commission. Therefore, on February 26, the Constitutional Court tasked the CEC with performing the necessary recalculations so that the Court could make a ruling based on the information provided.

In the past few days, the CEC raised several questions, to which the Court responded immediately. However, on March 10, after 6:00 PM, the Constitutional Court was informed that the CEC still had not carried out the assigned task, because "Information Services" had handed over the materials provided to it in the constitutional case, including technical media and devices, to the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office without the approval of the Constitutional Court. This has hindered the work of the Constitutional Court in completing the case challenging the legality of the elections.

I find it necessary to emphasize that the only competent body according to the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria that can assess the legality of the election of Members of Parliament is the Constitutional Court. All state bodies are obligated to fully cooperate with the Court, not obstruct its activities. It is unacceptable for the work of the Constitutional Court to be dependent on the actions or inactions of other state bodies."