site.btaRevisions to Act on Announcing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to Former State Security Services Adopted on First Reading

At its sitting here on Wednesday, the National Assembly adopted, 132-54 with one abstention, first-reading amendments to the Act on Access and Disclosure of Documents and Announcing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian National Army, tabled by Martin Dimitrov of Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) and a group of MPs. Under the revisions, the commissions that register candidates for various elections under the Election Code must provide the Committee for Disclosing the Documents and Announcing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian National Army (commonly known as the secret police files committee) with specific information about those running in the elections.

The information includes the candidate's full name, identity registration number, and the party, coalition or steering committee nominating them. The current law requires only that the election commissions provide within 24 hours post-registration the list of candidates to be checked by the Committee. 

The draft amendments were backed on first reading by GERB-UDF, CC-DB, MRF - New Beginning, There Is Such a People, the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms, and Morality, Unity, Honour (MECh). The votes against came from Vazrazhdane, BSP - United Left, and Velichie. One MP of Vazrazhdane abstained.

The reasoning for the amendments reads that making the work of the election commissions more specific is needed to carry out the compulsory verification of affiliation to the State Security and Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian National Army and, on the other hand, to ensure publicity of the results of the verification in order to inform the citizens in the exercise of their active right to vote.

Dimitrov recalled that in June 2024, during the parliamentary elections, the Central Election Commission initially sent a blank sheet to the Committee and subsequently incomplete data on the candidate MPs. This has prevented the Committee from carrying out a verification, so the CC-DB proposes to clearly spell out the duty of the election administration, he reasoned. "With the amendments, we guarantee that the checks cannot be partial and that no election administration can stop or limit them at a given moment," Dimitrov said.