Overview: Bulgaria is a parliamentary democracy in which the prime minister occupies the most powerful executive position. The current constitution was ratified in 1991. After a period of deep instability in the mid- and late 1990s, governance in Bulgaria was stabilized in 2001 by the selection of Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, son of Tsar Boris III, as prime minister. Although Simeon’s government had lost popularity at the time of the June 2005 parliamentary elections, during the previous four years economic, political, and geopolitical conditions had improved greatly, and a constructive balance had been established between the legislative and executive branches. The locus of government power is the central government, on which local authorities depend heavily and which names the governors of Bulgaria’s regions. European authorities consider the judiciary in need of substantial reform for Bulgaria to qualify for membership in the European Union (EU). In mid-2005, shifts in party alignments made a change of government a strong possibility following the parliamentary elections of June 2005. Meanwhile, many in the public see all branches of government as corrupt.
Executive Branch: The president, who is chief of state and commander of the armed forces, has limited domestic powers. The president and vice president are elected every five years by direct popular vote and can be re-elected once. The president cannot initiate legislation, but he can return a bill to parliament for further discussion. Parliament, in turn, can overturn such a veto by a simple majority vote. The president appoints the chairmen of the top two national courts, the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court, as well as the state’s top legal representative, the chief prosecutor. The prime minister, who is head of government, is nominally selected by the president and approved by the National Assembly (parliament). Normally, the selectee as prime minister is the leader of the party receiving the most votes in parliamentary elections. The prime minister nominates a Council of Ministers (cabinet), which must be approved by a majority of the National Assembly. In 2005 Bulgaria’s Council of Ministers included 19 ministers, two deputy prime ministers, and the chairman of the Bulgarian National Bank. The council is responsible for managing the state budget, carrying out state policy, and maintaining law and order. Council members usually come from the majority or plurality party in parliament. In 2004 two ministers were ethnic Turks, and six were women.
Legislative Branch: The unicameral National Assembly (Narodno Sŭbranie) includes 240 seats, to which members are elected for four-year terms by direct popular vote. Party representation is proportional to votes gained, but a party must gain at least 4 percent of the popular vote to achieve representation. At no time since 1990 have more than five parties been represented in the National Assembly. The assembly enacts laws, schedules presidential elections, approves prime ministers and cabinet members, ratifies international treaties and agreements, and declares war. A president’s refusal to sign legislation can be overcome by a simple majority vote. In the 2001 elections, 63 women and 24 non-Bulgarians were elected members of the National Assembly.
Judicial Branch: After becoming a separate branch in 1991, Bulgaria’s judiciary has reformed slowly. The first major reform was the 1994 Judicial Powers Act, which defined the powers of the branch. Further refinements came in a series of constitutional amendments in 2003. The Supreme Administrative Court and Supreme Court of Cassation, the highest courts of appeal, rule on the application of laws in lower courts. The Supreme Judicial Council manages the system and appoints judges. The 25 members of that council serve five-year terms. Members are ex-officio government officials selected by the National Assembly and members of the judicial system. The Constitutional Court of 12 judges serving nine-year terms interprets the constitutionality of laws and treaties. It can rescind laws that it judges unconstitutional. Members of that court, which is separate from the rest of the judicial system, are selected in equal numbers by the president, the National Assembly, and members of the supreme courts.
Administrative Divisions: Bulgaria is divided into 28 regions (oblasti) and the region surrounding the capital city, which is a separate jurisdiction. At the local level, there are 262 municipalities.
Provincial and Local Government: Regional governors are named by the national Council of Ministers. Municipalities are run by mayors, who are elected to four-year terms, and by municipal councils, which are directly elected legislative bodies. Subnational jurisdictions are heavily dependent on the central government for funding; plans call for decentralization, which would expand the power of those jurisdictions.
Judicial and Legal System: The judicial system below national level includes regional, district, and appellate courts; military courts also exist, separate from the military, at the district and appellate levels. Court cases may have as many as three stages: first instance, appeal, and cassation. The legal system, which guarantees public trial and legal representation, has suffered from backlogs that abridge the rights of some accused individuals. A new code of criminal procedure, adopted in May 2005, restricts the responsibilities of police and investigatory agencies to conform to European Union (EU) standards. The prosecutors' offices are in a centralized hierarchy, parallel to the court structure and run by the chief prosecutor, who is appointed by the president. In 2004 the judiciary retained its long-standing reputation for corruption.
Electoral System: Bulgaria has universal suffrage for citizens 18 years of age and older. Bulgaria’s elections are supervised by an independent Central Election Commission that includes members from all major political parties. Parties must register with the commission prior to participating in a national election. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for June 2005, the next presidential election for late 2006. Both of those dates comply with the term stipulations of four years for members of parliament and five years for the president and vice president. New, standardized election procedures were introduced for the June 2005 election. Local elections are held every four years; those held in 2003 were widely considered free and fair.
Politics and Political Parties: The parties and coalitions that appeared in post-communist Bulgaria remained relatively consistent through the first 15 years of that period, although coalitions and alliances changed frequently. In the 2001 parliamentary elections, four parties gained 85.5 percent of the votes. The parties that retained dominant positions from the 1990s are the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP, as the Bulgarian Communist Party renamed itself in 1990), the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF, a coalition formed in 1989 as the chief opposition to the communist government), and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF, founded in 1990 to represent the Muslim minority). Since the 2001 parliamentary elections, the BSP has been the largest faction in a leftist grouping called the Coalition for Bulgaria, which won 49 seats in those elections. The UDF, which during the 1990s was the major opposition to the BSP and won several national elections, won 51 seats in the 2001 elections. The newest major party is the Simeon II National Movement (SNM), which former king Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha founded on his return to Bulgaria in 2001. The SNM won exactly half of the 240 seats of parliament in the 2001 elections and gained control by forming a coalition with the MRF. However, the SNM’s public approval has dropped dramatically in its four years of rule; it did not perform well in the 2003 local elections, and some of its representatives left the party in the early 2000s. In 2005 both the SNM and the UDF showed significant rifts among coalition members. Some 33 parties and coalitions registered to participate in the parliamentary elections of June 2005.
Mass Media: In 2005 Bulgaria’s print and broadcast media generally were considered unbiased, although the government dominated broadcasting through the state-owned Bulgarian National Television and Bulgarian National Radio and print news dissemination through the largest press agency, the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency. Four other domestic press agencies were in operation in 2004. Opposition views and minority programming appear frequently in the broadcast media, particularly radio, and newspapers offer a wide variety of positions on political and other issues. BNT operates two national television networks; two private companies, Balkan Television (bTV, owned by Rupert Murdoch) and Nova Television (NTV), began broadcasting in the early 2000s. BNR operates two national radio networks, Radio Christo Botev and Radio Horizont, and a number of regional stations.
The daily newspapers with the widest circulation are 24 Chasa, Novinar, Duma, Noshten Trud, and Trud. All of those titles are published in Sofia. Many political and single-issue organizations publish their own daily or weekly newspapers. Most European news agencies have offices in Sofia, as do agencies from China, Cuba, Turkey, and the United States.
Foreign Relations: Beginning in the mid-1990s, Bulgaria has improved its relations with most neighboring countries. A water-rights dispute with Greece was resolved in 1997, and relations improved with the agreement on terms for the Burgas-Alexandroupolis gas pipeline in 2005. A number of bilateral agreements with Macedonia followed resolution of a linguistic dispute in 1999. Traditionally hostile relations with Turkey have warmed steadily since the end of the Cold War and establishment of full rights for Bulgaria’s substantial Turkish minority. Relations with Russia, Bulgaria’s staunchest ally in the communist era, cooled in the 1990s, but their improvement in the early 2000s survived Bulgaria’s admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2004. In the early 2000s, a series of major joint projects heralded a great improvement in relations with Romania, a neighbor with a long tradition of territorial and ethnic disagreements. Between 1998 and 2004, cross-border trade with Romania increased by seven times. In the late 1990s, Bulgaria had cool relations with Serbia and Montenegro during the regime of the Serb Slobodan Milošević, and some tension remains over Bulgaria’s pro-Western position on Kosovo and resurgent nationalism in Serbia.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, Bulgaria’s primary goal has been integration into the institutions of Western Europe. All political parties back membership in the European Union (EU) as a necessary follow-up to the NATO membership gained in 2004. In April 2005, the National Assembly’s passage of legislation for accession to the EU was considered a major event. In May 2005, however, the European Parliament cast some doubt on Bulgaria’s immediate prospects by delaying by one year the award of EU observer status. Bulgaria’s trade with EU countries continued to grow in the early 2000s; that group accounted for approximately half of both imports and exports by 2002. If Bulgaria achieves EU membership on schedule in 2007, substantial economic disruption is expected as national borders and restrictions disappear and Bulgarian enterprises face international competition. Bulgaria’s active support of the United States-led Mission Iraqi Freedom caused temporary tension with EU member countries not backing that campaign, but its participation also improved relations with the United States.
Membership in International Organizations: Bulgaria is a member of the following international organizations: Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation, Australia Group, Bank for International Settlements, Black Sea Economic Cooperation Pact, Council of Europe, Central European Initiative, Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Civil Aviation Organization, International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, International Finance Corporation, International Labour Organization, International Maritime Organization, International Monetary Fund, International Oceanographic Commission, International Organization for Migration, International Telecommunication Union, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Nuclear Energy Agency, Nuclear Suppliers Group, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Organization for Black Sea Economic Co-operation, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Pollution Control Agency, United Nations, United Nations Committee on Trade and Development, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, United Nations Industrial Development Organization, Universal Postal Union, World Confederation of Labor, Western European Union (associate affiliate), World Customs Organization, World Federation of Trade Unions, World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, World Tourism Organization, and World Trade Organization. In 2005 Bulgaria was an applicant for membership to the European Union, with possible membership in 2007.
Major International Treaties: Bulgaria is a signatory to the following international agreements: the Antarctic Treaty and its protocols on environmental protection and marine living resources; Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal; Biological Weapons Convention; Central European Initiative; Chemical Weapons Convention; Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; Convention on Biological Diversity; Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna; Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution and its protocols on nitrogen oxides, sulfur, and volatile organic compounds; Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques; Energy Charter Treaty; European Convention on Extradition; European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters; Geneva Conventions; International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships; Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer; Ramsar Convention on Wetlands; Southeast European Cooperative Initiative; Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons; United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification; and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol.