Democratic Bulgaria will ask the Constitutional Court to strike down the law on aid to farmers as unconstitutional. That's what DB MP Lyuben Ivanov told reporters in parliament.
Lawmakers passed the bill on second reading last week. DB had expected president Iliyana Yotova to send it back over the clauses on so-called "blank spots" funds, Ivanov said.
"We at DB will file a request to have it declared unconstitutional, because it breaches Article 17 of the constitution — it tramples on the right to private property," Ivanov said.
He explained where the problem lies. It's about money collected as rent for the so-called "blank spots" — land whose owners can't be identified — which should go to the rightful owners once they're found. Under the new law, though, that money will go into a mutual aid fund instead, and the people entitled to it will lose it, Ivanov said.
DB MP Svilen Trifonov added that the European Court of Human Rights has already ruled on this issue. "We cited it in committee at second reading, then again in the plenary debate, but no one took those arguments into account," he said. "What matters most is that president Yotova should have looked at that ruling, at our arguments and at the debate in the chamber, and sent the law back," Trifonov said.
Yotova didn't do that because, Trifonov said, she "is an extension of" prime minister Rumen Radev. "We can't expect her to act in defense of Bulgarian citizens, because she's simply following a political line that isn't her own," the MP said.