Resolution No. 3 of 17 July 2014 on Constitutional Case No. 11/2014
The case was instituted on 5 June 2014 upon an initiative from 49 Members of the 42nd National Assembly who referred to Art. 394, para 1 of the Election Code to request that the Constitutional Court declare invalid the Election to the European Parliament on 25 May 2014 of Members for the Republic of Bulgaria.
The MPs insisted that there had been actions in flagrant violation of the Election Code and that they can be summarized as follows:
А. Large-scale vote buying which compromised the election returns that don’t show the voters’ real choices and which combined with omission on the part of the competent government authorities who failed to take timely measures.
B. Spending during the election campaign of large amounts of money from sources that were not made transparent, hence the strong suspicions about the origin of the money, the business quarters who contributed the money and the swayed election returns.
The proceedings are in the first phase where the Constitutional Court is to rule on the admissibility of the petition in abidance by the procedure as provided for by Art. 19, para 1 of the Constitutional Court Act.
To hand down a ruling the Constitutional Court considered as follows:
The Constitutional Court acted on an initiative from a legitimate petitioner as per Art.150, para 1 of the Constitution, however, the petitioners made only general assessments of violations committed during the holding of the elections and failed to cite concrete circumstances that make out a case. Nonetheless in the case at issue it won’t be needed to resort to the procedure under Art. 19, para 3 of the Rules on the Organization and Activities of the Constitutional Court (ROACC) which procedure seeks to eliminate deficiencies as per Art. 18, para 2, item 4 of the ROACC, since under the existing legislation the Constitutional Court is not vested with the power to pronounce totally invalid elections by which the Republic of Bulgaria is to send its Members to the European Parliament and thus to push for a new election which is exactly what the MPs petition for. The Legislature complied with Art. 42, para 2 of the Constitution and conformed to Point VІІ of the Constitutional Court’s Decision No. 4/2011 on Constitutional Case No. 4/2011 and codified in Section ХІІ of Chapter ХVІІ of the existing Election Code a procedure to be followed to overthrow the results of election of MEPs with the Constitutional Court solely in the context of Art. 149, para 1, item 7 of the Constitution, that is, only with regard to the election of a MEP (cf. Arts. 393-395 of the Election Code). That binding legal frame includes Art. 394, para 1 of the Election Code to which the petitioners refer to justify their petition’s admissibility.
The above account invites a conclusion that there exists no legal avenue to approach the Constitutional Court to dispute the entire legitimacy of the election of Members of the European Parliament for the Republic of Bulgaria and to petition that the election be quashed altogether. Since in this particular case the Constitutional Court has been approached with a petition that goes beyond its competence, the petition shall be abandoned and action shall be dismissed subject to Art. 26, para 1, proposition 2 of the ROACC.
Председател: Димитър Токушев