site.btaSpecific Information on Election Candidates to Reach Communist-Era Secret Police Files Committee

Specific information on election candidates will be submitted upon their registration to the Communist-Era Secret Police Files Committee, according to legislative revisions that Bulgaria's Parliament passed conclusively on Thursday.

The bill to amend the Act on Access to, and Disclosure of, Documents and Announcing Bulgarian Citizens' Affiliation with State Security and the Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian National Army was moved by Martin Dimitrov MP of Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria and a group of lawmakers.

According to the revisions, the commissions registering election candidates will be required to submit to the Committee for Disclosing Documents and Announcing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and the Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian National Army the candidates' personal identification number, full name, and party, coalition or independent-candidate-nomination committee that is fielding them. Under the previous version of the law, election commissions were only required to submit the lists of candidates to the Committee for a check within 24 hours of registration.

The reasoning to the draft legislation states that at the June 2024 parliamentary elections, the Central Election Commission initially sent the Secret Police Files Committee a blank sheet and subsequently fragmentary data on the MP candidates. This prevented the Committee from checking the nominees as required by the law. The idea of the bill was to particularize clearly the obligation of the commissions registering candidates in various elections.