site.btaConstitutional Court Agrees to Hear Three Challenges to Budget Laws

The Constitutional Court decided to proceed in substance with three constitutional challenges related to the 2026 State Budget Act and the 2026 Public Social Insurance Budget Act, the court's press office reported on Tuesday. The claims were filed by the GERB-UDF coalition and the Continue the Change (CC) party. The decisions to admit the cases were adopted unanimously.

Two of the cases concern the state budget and will be merged into a single proceeding, with Justice Sonya Yankulova appointed as rapporteur. A separate case will examine a request to declare Article 113a of the Health Act unconstitutional. The provision is linked to the transitional and final provisions of the 2026 Public Social Insurance Budget Act. Justice Borislav Belazelkov will serve as rapporteur in that case.

CC's first challenge seeks to have provisions in the transitional and final clauses of the State Budget Act declared unconstitutional, arguing that they unlawfully amend the Labour Code and the Judiciary Act. GERB-UDF, for its part, is challenging the constitutionality of the State Budget Act in its entirety, arguing that it violates Article 4(1) of the Constitution, which enshrines the principles of the rule of law, legal certainty and the prohibition on implicitly derogating from the Public Finance Act, which governs the country's public finance framework.

In its second petition, CC argues that the disputed provision establishes an extraordinary and mandatory procedure requiring the medical expert panels (TELK) to re-examine cases that have already been concluded by final expert decisions.