DECISION No 16 OF JUNE 12, 2001 ON CC No 6/2001
Fifty-nine Members of the 38th National Assembly challenged texts from the Law on the State Budget of the Republic of Bulgaria for 2001 (2001 State Budget Law). Some of the texts concern the appropriations for the Judiciary and are claimed to be in contravention to the Constitution. The remaining texts concern the municipal budgets and are claimed to be in contravention to the Constitution and to the European Charter on Local Self-Government (the Charter).
The decision dismissed the challenge.
The challenged texts in the 2001 State Budget Law concerning the allocations for the Judiciary and the grounds on which the Court dismissed them are as follows:
- Art. 2 para 1, subpara II. The Supreme Judicial Council was not left without resources when the annual State Budget was approved. There was not a breakdown of the allocations for the Judiciary and the institution in question gets its slice.
- Art. 2 para 2. It falls within the prerogatives of the National Assembly to establish the procedure and set the conditions under which state subsidies are received by institutions, the Judiciary included, when it approves the State Budget. The Constitution places no restrictions on the Legislature in that respect.
- Art. 2 para 5, the word “surplus”. The National Assembly’s Constitution-granted prerogative to pass the State Budget (Art. 84/2) covers the regulations of the revenue sources. In view of that the Constitutional Court concluded that the surplus, just as the shortage of the Judiciary’s own revenue from fees collected by the Judiciary from operations, shall be for the account of the Republic’s Budget.
- Art. 2 para 8. The lawmaker deemed it is in the interest of the citizens and the public that where the judiciary bodies are housed in buildings that are owned by the State or by a municipality, they shall be charged no rent. This judgment and the approach that the National Assembly has chosen as most appropriate for the budgeting and the spending process conforms to the requirements of Art. 17 para 4 and Art. 18 para 6 of the Constitution.
The challenged texts from the 2001 State Budget Law concerning the municipalities’ budgets and the grounds on which the Court dismissed that part of the challenge are:
- Art. 1 para 2, in the part of item 1.11.1., 5.1.1., 5.2.1., Art. 9 paras 1 and 2 and Annex 3. Targeted social assistance and subsidies are planned in the State Budget to support municipalities. Subsidies plus the contributions calculated on the basis of approved formulae are an element of the budgetary relationships of the Republic’s Budget with the municipalities’ budgets. The methodology of determining the budgetary relationships as described in Annex 3 achieves the balance between national and local interest and protection of the financially vulnerable municipalities.
- Art. 10 para 1. Social assistance and childcare are not responsibilities of the Government alone. Art. 47 para 1 and Art. 51 of the Constitution read that these are responsibilities of society, and the municipalities are not to be excluded. Therefore, the Government can assign welfare functions to municipalities by a law.
- Art. 11 paras 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. The Constitution has no text to the effect that financial support to municipalities is not to be in the form of special-purpose subsidies in individual cases. Granting such subsidies is an outcome of a definite state policy whose implementation, just as the State Budget implementation, is managed by the Council of Ministers in line with Arts. 105 and 106 of the Constitution. In the context of these functions of the Council of Ministers, when municipalities’ capital expenditure outlays are financed by a special-purpose subsidy, the Minister of Finance may be asked to approve the allocation.
- Art. 13 paras 4 and 5, the words “the bodies of the Judiciary”, “and mayors”, “Art. 2 para 2” and “Art. 9 para 2” Clause 22 paras 2 and 3, Clauses 26, 30, 35 para 2 and Clause 37 of the Transitional and Concluding Provisions. The autonomy of municipal budgets does not exclude the possibility for the lawmaker to adopt rules of budgeting and spending. These rules can be used to define the financial projections that must be complied with in budgeting. Further, these rules can be used in the appropriation of long-term assets and in local municipal road repairs and in bringing certain restrictive conditions which will not allow to go beyond the agreed budget deficit or to reallocate special-purpose funds. These rules regulate budgetary relationships between municipalities and the State and extend protection on definite social groups.
- Clauses 9 and 10 of the Transitional and Concluding Provisions and Annex 4. The determination of extra-budgetary accounts and funds by the lawmaking body is not in contravention to the Constitution which does not provide for restrictions on that matter. That budget-supported agencies are not charged for the office space they have in state- or municipality-owned buildings is not in contravention to Art. 17 para 4 and Art. 18 para 6 of the Constitution either.
The provisions in question are not dissonant with the Charter either. The Constitutional Court assumed the Charter requirements of protection extended on financially vulnerable municipalities and of supplying sufficient available resource to municipalities within the framework of the national economic policy had been met.
