Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry Gearing Up for Anticipated Recall of Ambassadors

Vesela Cherneva, Spokesperson of Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry, has assured that the government will not be caught unprepared by the anticipated recall of 37 Ambassadors with proven links to the Communist regime's State Security. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry has confirmed that it is gearing up for the upcoming reshuffle of diplomatic staff.

Speaking at a media briefing on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Vesela Cherneva assured that consultations were underway on the action plan for the expected recall of Bulgarian ambassadors exposed as collaborators of the communist regime's State Security (DS) and the subsequent appointment of replacements.

"The will of the President-Elect to implement the recall of Ambassadors reported by the Files Commission was absolutely clear. Naturally, this will help us finish what we started," Cherneva said, commenting on the Foreign Ministry's preparedness for Rosen Plevneliev's alleged agenda.

Cherneva stressed that the pending decision of the Constitutional Court on the amendments to the Diplomatic Service Act and the presidential decrees for the recall of Ambassadors with ties to DS were unrelated.

The Foreign Ministry Spokesperson argued that, after assuming office on January 22 2012, President Plevneliev would have the constitutional right to sign the decrees for the recall of Bulgaria's diplomatic representatives abroad, which the Council of Ministers proposed to the Presidential Administration in December 2010.

Cherneva insisted that the government's proposal for recalling Ambassadors with State Security records was unrelated to the contested amendments to the Diplomatic Service Act because it had been launched before that and it constituted an expression of the political will of the Cabinet.

She explained that the government's proposal had been triggered by a declaration of Parliament presenting its negative stance on the diplomats exposed as former collaborators of DS, while the Diplomatic Service Act and its amendments regulated pending and future appointments.

Cherneva further made it clear that the procedure for appointing Bulgarian Ambassadors abroad would not be changed and the nominations, the coordination process and their confirmation would not be made public.

She noted that the names of the new Ambassadors would become public knowledge after the Presidential decrees for their appointment were issued.

Bulgaria's Ambassadors abroad are currently appointed with a Presidential decree following a proposal of the government in a questionably transparent procedure, news portal Mediapool reminds.

Bulgaria's Constitutional Court is yet to come up with a ruling on the legality of the amendments to the Diplomatic Service Act banning former State Security agents from taking up key diplomatic positions.

The case was brought to the Constitutional Court by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), which insisted that the Bill Amending and Supplementing the Diplomatic Service Act had to be declared unconstitutional in its entirety.

The controversial set of legal amendments was adopted by the Parliament in mid-July, paving the way for reshuffles affecting the country's 35 ambassadors proven to have been collaborators of the communist regime's secret service – State Security, DS.

The changes initiated by Foreign Minister, Nikolay Mladenov, were designed to rectify the huge scandal that shook the Bulgarian government in the fall of 2010 with regards to the diplomats' lustration (i.e. limiting the participation of former communists, and especially informants of the communist secret police in the civil service).

The Foreign Minister was outraged when at the end of 2010 the so-called Files Commission, the special panel examining the Communist era documentation, revealed that almost half of Bulgaria's ambassadors abroad, in a number of key countries – from the UK to Russia and China, had been collaborators of the former State Security Service.

At the end of July, Parvanov imposed a veto on legal amendments, which ban former State Security agents from the times of the Communist regime to take up key diplomatic positions.

On September 01, Bulgaria's Parliament overturned the presidential veto, with a total of 129 "against" votes of MPs from the ruling Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, GERB, party, the far-right, nationalist Ataka and the right-wing Blue Coalition.

The opposition, the left-wing Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, and the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, DPS, supported the presidential veto.

On November 03, President-Elect Rosen Plevneliev announced that the first thing he would do after assuming office in January 2012 would be to recall all Bulgarian Ambassadors with State Security records.

One day later it was reported that four Bulgarian Ambassadors were suing the Foreign Ministry over their recall.

The Foreign Ministry initiated the recall procedures after President Georgi Parvanov, a former collaborator of DS under the codename of agent Gotse, refused to abide by the government's decision and the Parliament's stance and did not sign the Decrees for the dismissal of the 37 discredited diplomats.

All of the four claims were filed with the Supreme Administrative Court (VAS) and were based on the fact that the Constitution defines the President as the sole authority empowered to recall heads of diplomatic representations.

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