News

8 November 2023

Ombudsman Diana Kovacheva refers the Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov, the Minister of Energy Rumen Radev, the Minister of Labour and Social Policy Ivanka Shalapatova and the Minister of Regional Development and Public Works Andrey Tsekov concerning a serious breach of legal principles in the drafting of a normative act.

In this particular case, Prof. Kovacheva draws attention to the fact that the public consultation on the draft energy poverty ordinance, which affects hundreds of thousands of households, ends today. At the same time, the amendments to the Energy Act have not been published in the State Gazette because President Rumen Radev, on 18 October, imposed a veto. According to a decision by a five-member panel of the Supreme Administrative Court, the discussion of a draft ordinance should begin after the act is promulgated and comes into force.

This is an infringement of the statutory principles of openness and consistency under the Normative Acts Act (NAA).

Even if the lawmakers override the veto imposed by the head of state and the act is passed, the deadline for public consultation of the ordinance expires today, i.e. before the publication of the amendments to the Energy Act. In practice, the public consultation procedure is flawed. A separate issue is that no motives have been published with the draft ordinance, which is another serious violation of the NNA, for which the Ombudsman has alerted as early as 27 October 2023.

Regarding the draft, the Ombudsman emphasizes that it raises many unanswered questions and notes that there are legitimate concerns about: the way of determination of the number of people in need and thereby the scope of the support schemes; the financial and other means that will be required for the implementation of the ordinance; cooperation between national and local governance authorities; effective communication and exchange of information with the vulnerable and those affected by energy poverty; the establishment and management of the information system for the energy poor; the methodology for establishing price types for final household electricity customers; the monitoring of the implementation of the ordinance and the guidelines on its implementation.