Parliament obliges government to table ratification of Bulgaria’s membership of Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’

Bulgaria’s National Assembly voted on March 13 to oblige the government to table the ratification of the agreement on the country’s accession to Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace”.

Caretaker Prime Minister Andrei Gyurov, speaking to reporters at the government building before the vote, said that if Parliament approved the proposal, he would refer the matter to the Constitutional Court.

Gyurov linked the proposal to “certain politicians are trying to trade national interests against their position on the Magnitsky list” – a clear reference to Movement for Rights and Freedoms – New Beginning leader Delyan Peevski, who is sanctioned by the US for corruption and who tabled the “Board of Peace” proposal.

The decision was approved, in the 240-seat House, with 100 votes in favour, 54 against, with three abstentions.

The votes in favour came from Boiko Borissov’s GERB-UDF, MRF – New Beginning and populist party ITN.

Those against came from We Continue the Change – New Beginning, Vuzrazhdane, the Bulgarian Socialist Party – United Left, while two MPs from Mech and one from Vuzrazhdane abstained.

Bulgaria’s accession to the “Board of Peace” was signed by then-prime minister Rossen Zhelyazkov, of GERB-UDF, on January 22, in the final days of his government.

The decision to sign was not announced in advance and was taken in camera by the then-government. The step immediately generated controversy.

Peevski, aided by GERB-UDF, got the decision pushed on to Parliament’s Order Paper, even though Georg Georgiev, then foreign minister in the Zhelyazkov government, had said weeks ago that a decision on ratification would be left to the next Parliament, to be elected in April.

In the March 13 debate, the MRF tried to make the case for Bulgaria’s membership, with Iskra Mihailova saying that the US was offering a new option for the world to sort out its relations, while Yordan Tsonev said that the US was a strategic partner of Bulgaria and Europe and “the UN has gone down in history”.

Georgiev accused opponents of the “Board of Peace” of arguing that the US and the EU are enemies.

He cited the UN resolution allowing the “Board of Peace” to act as a transitional administration in Gaza as the legal basis for Trump’s initiative.

WCC-DB’s Vassil Pandov argued that the basis of the draft decision was constitutionally flawed, because Parliament could not tell the government to table a ratification, and it was the prerogative of the executive, not the legislature, to conduct foreign policy.

Pandov said that the text of the government’s decision on joining the “Board of Peace” had never been published, and he added that it was not clear whether the “Board of Peace” met the definition of an international organisation, membership of which would be subject to ratification.

He said that Bulgaria joining the Peace Council raises doubts about a violation of the UN Charter

WCC-DB’s Atanas Slavov said that the charter of the “Board of Peace” makes it an organisation that is “unipersonal, hereditary and quasi-monarchical.”

He said that the UN resolution in no way allows for the creation of a new international body. “We do not deny our strategic partnership with the US, but let us not waver in our hard-won place at the heart of the EU,” Slavov said.

He said that most EU countries had declined to join the “Board of Peace”.

In his remarks to reporters earlier, Gyurov said that there is a very clear practice of the Constitutional Court, which says that the National Assembly cannot impose actions of the caretaker government.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Nadezhda Neynski made a clear distinction between Trump’s comprehensive peace plan for Gaza, in which Bulgarian former foreign minister Nikolai Mladenov has an exceptional role, and the expanded version of the “Board of Peace”.

“We have our big reservations, as do almost all countries in the European Union, regarding the legal status of the expanded version, which already goes beyond Gaza,” Neynski said.

She said that this would be the reason to request an opinion from the Constitutional Court if a decision is adopted in the National Assembly.

Neynski said that it is necessary to clarify whether the texts of the charter do not contradict the Bulgarian Constitution and the laws of the country. These are actually the reservations of the majority of European countries, she said.

Ahead of Bulgaria’s April early parliamentary elections, it is expected that sittings of the current Parliament will stop at the end of next week. Apart from Gyurov’s stated intention to refer the decision to the Constitutional Court, the decision itself specifies no deadline for the government to table the ratification.