What Does the Constitution Provide for When the President Resigns?

According to Article 97 of the Constitution, one of the possibilities for the early termination of the powers of the President and the Vice President is the submission of a resignation to the Constitutional Court. The powers of the President and the Vice President are terminated upon the establishment of the stated circumstances by the Constitutional Court.

Bulgaria's President Radev Announces Resignation

According to the Basic Law, when the Head of State submits his resignation, the Vice President assumes the office of President until the end of the term. The current Vice President of Bulgaria is Iliana Iotova.

Rumen Radev is the fifth democratically elected President of the Republic of Bulgaria, as stated on the website of the Head of State. He was elected for his first term in November 2016, and in November 2021 he was re-elected for a second term. In the period 2014–2016, Rumen Radev was Commander of the Bulgarian Air Force.

So far, there has been no case of a Bulgarian President submitting a resignation. In the second round of the first democratic presidential elections, on 19 January 1992, Zhelyu Zhelev and Blaga Dimitrova, nominated by the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), were elected President and Vice President. On 30 June 1993, Vice President Blaga Dimitrova submitted her resignation. In her statement to the Constitutional Court, she declared that she had “long been considering this decision” and cited political considerations as the reason for her action, as stated in the Constitutional Court’s Decision of 6 July 1993. With the same decision, the Court prematurely terminated Blaga Dimitrova’s powers as Vice President.