Bulgaria's GERB MEP Mariya Nedelcheva: Semi-Presidential Republic Would Be Best for Bulgaria

Mariya Nedelcheva, Member of the European Parliament from Bulgaria's ruling GERB party. Photo by gerb.bg

Interview with Mariya Nedelcheva, Member of the European Parliament from Bulgaria's ruling GERB party of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

Nedelcheva is an Assistant Professor at the Political Science Institute in Bordeaux, France. She has completed her Ph. D. in Bordeaux and Brussels. Nedelcheva is an expert in political parties and government, and European law, and has experience with EU structural funds projects. She speaks French, English, and Russian. She was elected MEP from the GERB party in June 2009.

Several weeks have passed since the government of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov took office. With 116 GERB MPs and the support of there smaller rightist parties, the Borisov cabinet is both a "minority government", and a government with sizable parliamentary support (162 MPs out of 240). Just how stable is the GERB government and why?

In my view, the stability of the government has to do with the factors led to the creation of this government and to the results of the GERB party in the last elections in July. And I also see its stability as dependent on what is going to happen, i.e. if GERB's campaign promises and statements would coincide with what will happen in the first months of the cabinet's mandate.

In this respect, I really want to discuss what a "minority government" means. The fact that GERB is only five votes short of a majority makes it very hard to define it as a "minority cabinet". Rather, it is somewhat surprising for me that in the last eight years the idea of forming coalitions has become so powerful that the moment one single party decided to assume responsibility for its government alone, it is described as a government of the minority. We can't call 40%, or 1 680 000 Bulgarian voters a minority, that is offensive for them.

On what issues and when can be expected cracks in the informal rightist coalition backing GERB? What might be its major differences with the three smaller rightist parties? One of them (RZS) has declared unconditional support for Borisov's government but only for 6 months - what will happen after this initial period?

I think that their support is again connected with what will actually be done by this government because the parties that expressed their support actually have common principles with GERB. To put it bluntly, it is about restoring EU's trust in Bulgaria, coping with the crisis, and putting an end to corruption. If the government fails to at least make decisive steps showing an aspiration for improvement in those areas, it is very likely that the other rightist parties will withdraw their support.

Do you expect that the GERB government will serve its full four-year term in office based on the Parliamentary support that it has today?

I am going to use here the phrase that Mr. Borisov used: "We don't want to form a government at any cost, and we don't want to serve the whole term at any cost". This is also was his justification for his decision not to form a coalition because, as he said, there is no point in serving one or two more years when you might be blackmailed by your coalition partners who might not have the most honest intentions.

How do the EU and the Brussels institutions view the fact that the nationalist party Ataka is an informal coalition partner of GERB, supporting the GERB government?

I don't know if enough attention is paid to the meaning of "coalition partner". This means someone who is actually participating in the government. "Ataka" supports the memorandum that GERB offered to all parties, i.e. it is one of the other parties, not a coalition partner. In this respect, there is a clear differentiation between us and Ataka on topics that are key for the identity of our party. But here we are not talking about party identity but about the interests of the nation.

What about a scenario in which the other two rightist parties - the Blue Coalition and RZS - withdraw their support, and GERB's parliamentary majority depends only on Ataka?

In this case, it would be important on which themes Ataka will be lending its support, i.e. to what extent the GERB party will manage to abstain from the topics that qualify Ataka as an extremist party. We have declared clearly our European identity. As long as Bulgaria is a EU member, and GERB is a member of the European People's Party, there is no way that GERB and Ataka will come closer in their positions. In case Ataka remains the only parliamentary partner supporting the GERB government, this support will only be based on issues regarding the vital interests of the state. Under no circumstances should party identity and national interest be mixed up.

Can the GERB party be described as a Gaullist party, a party close to Gaullism?

If we take into consideration that a Gaullist party typically stands for a strong executive authority and assuming personal responsibility for the executive decisions, these two elements have been declared by GERB and Mr. Borisov and his Ministers; so we might say it has Gaullist elements in this sense. On the other hand, Gaullism is usually associated with a different type of republic, not the type of parliamentary republic that Bulgaria has.

History does not repeat itself, and even less so in different states. Yet, can you see any similarities (or do you expect to see any in the future) between France, which was headed by General Charles de Gaul and changed its form of government after facing grave challenges in the 1950s, and today's Bulgaria, which also faces huge issues and where General Borisov is just assuming power?

History does not repeat itself, and even less so in different states. Yet, can you see any similarities (or do you expect to see any in the future) between France, which was headed by General Charles de Gaul and changed its form of government after facing grave challenges in the 1950s, and today's Bulgaria, which also faces huge issues and where General Borisov is just assuming power?

Every comparison is risky because the context and the factors that led to it are different. But as taking it as an intellectual challenge, some parallels may be discovered. Of course, France in the 1950s had recently come out of World War II. The Fourth Republic was not even parliamentary; it was the so called "Republic of Parties" because France had 22 governments in only 12 years. This is a record we cannot break.

The similarity that can be seen concerns the degree to which party conflict was detrimental to the state and its interests. We saw this happening in Bulgaria, especially in the last four years with the three-way coalition partners. So this is a similarity.

The other parallel is that once it is clear that this party bickering is no good for the interests of the citizens, and the state, it is better for a brief period of time to have a strong executive authority that can take hard decisions and implement them. The 1950s in France are connected with the large infrastructure projects, this is when the 30 Great Years begin - a reference to the three great days of 1830 - this is an interesting comparison. Then, there was also the social aspect to finally put forth the interests of the people; there was the idea for assuming personal responsibility, and the awareness of the demographic problem, all the infrastructure projects. But in terms of foreign policy, there are huge differences - France withdrew from NATO, and was against UK's admission to the EEC.

Is changing Bulgaria's form of government - from a parliamentary to presidential republic a deliberate objective of GERB and Boyko Borisov? Or is it just a possible scenario depending on how things go during the mandate of the new government?

If we take into account the fact that the ways in which the parties and the electoral legislation are structured - the so called "elections engineering" - are among the basic elements of the political system, we see that one of the first things that GERB wants to implement is the changing the electoral law in order to prevent its use for ad hoc and short-term political goals - such as allowing or preventing a certain party from entering Parliament.

In this sense, there is an aspiration to change the political system since we realize two things. First, that the constitutional texts created at the beginning of the 1990s - the beginning of the post-communist transition - no longer match the new realities of Bulgaria as a NATO and EU member; second, that any single political system needs one key feature - stability - in order to be able to implement it's the executive decisions.

Going a little bit back to my first questions - could the potential breakup of the informal coalition backing GERB be the catalyst for seeking such a change of the form of government?

This scenario seems very hypothetical to me. Going back to what Mr. Borisov said - the moment he no longer has the support of the other rightist parties, he will be assuming personal responsibility for any decision of his cabinet before the Parliament, no matter how many MPs back his government. This is the norm in every parliamentary republic, and it is about time that we see this be implemented in Bulgaria.

Bulgaria's former President, Zhelyu Zhelev recently put forth his view that Bulgaria needed a presidential republic of the French type, i.e. semi-presidential system. In your view, which is the most suitable form of government for Bulgaria? If it is presidential republic - of which type - the French or the American type?

I just want to clarify some terms because a presidential system in its pure form exists only in the USA. We should also think about what stages a society needs to go through in order to be ready for a democratic presidential system. I would like to give Russia's type of presidential republic as an example here...

The major thing to consider in the French case is the text of the Constitution because it can be adapted equally well to a situation in which the President and the Prime Minister are from the same party, or when they are from different parties - a period of "cohabitation". In each case, there are different references to the articles of the Constitution. Maybe this is what Bulgaria lacks - a constitutional text that is a lot more flexible, not like the one adopted in 1991. We know why the 1991 Constitution was made so strict - in order to prevent things from going back.. The key thing about the French semi-presidential system is that it changes depending on whether the President and the Prime Minister are from the same party.

It is very interesting that Bulgaria does not have a purely parliamentary system because the President is elected directly by the people; yet, the President does not have substantial powers.

I personally believe that the Constitution needs to be changed because it no longer matches the new realities; it needs to be a lot more flexible because every strict text excludes rather than "includes" many opportunities. It is high time the Bulgarian state and society stopped start seeking the "inclusion", involvement of people and interests, and common decisions.

If Bulgaria becomes a presidential republic, and Boyko Borisov is elected President, should we be concerned of potential semi-authoritarian trends?

So far Mr Borissov is the Bulgarian prime minister and I would not allow myself to comment on him in any other role now or on some imaginary tendencies. I think the matter should not be personalized - finally we are speaking about principles. But generally I am reserved towards the presidential system. The American society is a very specific one, and there are checks and balances there, and the civil society is very active; America has a bilateral legislature - just as in France - something that we don't have.

Going for a presidential republic would be a radical change. Considering this risk created by the presidential system, I think we'd better think of a semi-presidential system, and a more flexible constitutional text instead of rushing for a form of government that may logically and very often lead to authoritarian changes.

How do you think the EU should develop - towards greater supranationality, i.e. a European superstate, or to the contrary?

I think that it is high time the EU turned from an economic union into a political union. I would like to clarify that I am not talking of uniformity, turning into a superstate. I am talking about the fact that the EU would be heard on the international stage only if there is a political dimension to it. Because we can see how at international meetings it is unclear who expresses the EU position. To quote Kissinger with all his cynicism, "What is EU's phone number?"

Do you expect the Lisbon Treaty will be ratified by Ireland and will come into force by the end of 2009? To what extent is it going to solve the institutional problems the EU faces?

Ireland's referendum has been scheduled for October 2, and all polls show that the Lisbon Treaty will be ratified, and will come into force by the end of the year.

I view the Lisbon Treaty with pragmatism. One of the main arguments in its favor is that after 12 new member states were admitted to the Union in 2004-2007, the EU institutions do not function well. I want to mention an important research here - the first report of the Observatory of EU institutions which paradoxically proves that the decisions have been made much faster after the admission of the 12 new states because the members were more prone to comprise knowing there are 27 member-states.

Of course, this cannot disparage the other measures that the Lisbon Treaty will introduce. It is going to place the European Parliament equally with the Council of Ministers. This is a step towards a political union because the EP is the only directly elected institution, and is logically to let it make decisions.

There is also the new position of a Foreign Minister, and providing for a stable Presidency. We have just witnessed how the presently existing six-month Presidency can be affected by internal problems of the rotating Chair - as in the case of the Czech Republic.

It also provides for the so called civic initiative that can be put forth with the signatures of 1 million EU citizens.

In which of the common policies has Bulgaria participated most successfully? In what spheres can Bulgaria become influential in the EU?In which of the common policies has Bulgaria participated most successfully? In what spheres can Bulgaria become influential in the EU?

It will be very hard for me to cite examples of success. It is just enough to say that Bulgaria is the only member without a position on the health check of the Common Agricultural Policy, or the EU Guarantee Fund.

My main point is - and I hope my colleagues would agree - is that Bulgaria must stop acting like a candidate country that gets Brussels directives, and tries to apologize when it fails to implement them; it should start acting like an equal partner. We are an EU member, and our position is just as important as those of Germany and France. In this respect, we are yet to be active in the Common Energy Policy, the new reform of the CAP, the climate change policy. All of Bulgaria's 17 MEPs should stand for our national interest.

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