site.btaSame Individual May Not Be Acting Supreme Court President, Prosecutor General for More than Six Months, Constitutional Court Decides

Bulgaria's Constitutional Court on Tuesday unanimously issued a decision dismissing a petition from the Varna Court of Appeal regarding a Judicial System Act provision on the term in office of an acting prosecutor general or a supreme court president.

The Court decided that the performance of the functions of a supreme court president or prosecutor general by one and the same individual may not exceed the six-month period set by the Judicial System Act as supplemented. 

The Varna Court asked the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of a new paragraph added in the Judicial System Act, effective January 21, 2025, which limited to six months the period during which a particular individual can serve as acting prosecutor general or acting president of the Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) or of the Supreme Administrative Court. The Constitutional Court was also supposed to determine whether this provision applies only ex nunc or also to persons who have been assigned such functions before its entry into force.

In its decision of April 7, the Constitutional Court determined that the six-month period set in the contested provision of the law is not a term in office of a prosecutor general or a supreme court president because such a term is set only for the regular holders of these offices and moreover in the basic law. "The purpose of introducing a period by the contested provision is to prevent one and the same individual from a temporarily unlimited performance of such functions," the Constitutional Court reasoned. 

The decision points out that the Constitution does not provide for an "acting" supreme court president and prosecutor general and does not regulate their status, including the duration of the performance of such functions by one and the same individual.

At the same time, the Court is adamant that it is the responsibility of the SCC to reconcile conflicting case law on the matter. The SCC can thus be expected to follow up the Constitutional Court decision by instituting an interpretative case on the matter.

Five Constitutional Court judges (Court President Pavlina Panova, Atanas Semov, Yanaki Stoilov, Sonya Yankulova and Borislav Belazelkov) stated in an opinion appended to the decision that the contested provision is also consistent with the Constitution with regard to a legal relationship that predates it.