1 constitution, 9 codexes and 312 laws make the main frame of Bulgarian law. And these digits do not include ratified international treaties as well as thousands of executive regulations which enjoy the same binding effect to the extent that a total cross-reference in a data base checks not less than 20 000 normative acts.

If you ask an ordinary Bulgarian on the street the first three things he is proud of he will most probably answer : nature, yogurt and children and he will certainly miss the laws. Not because he can critically assess them but because a) he does not see them enforced and b) a failed justice is always blamed on bad laws- not on bad executives or bad courts. The curse is on the product and not on the producer. Top Bulgarian politicians are easy to recognize at international forums by their standard reaction to legal criticism “We acknowledge the problem but a new law is being drafted to tackle it”.

It appears to us that the technology of Bulgarian legislation suffers from two major defects :

First : The country issues much more laws than it can enforce. There is no equation between the number of acting legal commands and the state’s capacity to enforce them, to cover them with actual sanctions. If a car battery can make 10 lamps light, not a single one will light if you connect to that same battery 100 lamps. It is like printing money without covering assets. Since 5 years Bulgaria is under a strict monetary board but it needs a new one – a legislative board to ban adoption of new laws if they are not secured by adequate enforcement. The enforcement deficit is nearing the point of enforcement bankruptcy. And no one cares because “…a new law is being drafted…”.

Second : Many rules of law are no longer simple direct definitions for human behavior but are conditioned on discretion/ permission of administration. “You can carry so much cash abroad as the finance minister allows you to”. In this way the core of the law command, the will of the rule is transferred from parliament to government which erodes the separation of powers by this delegation of responsibilities. The actual disposition of the law norm is defined not by legislature but by executive. That is how most of the important Bulgarian laws cannot function without government regulations for implementation. The Ten God’s Commands of the Bible are still among the very few norms without such an executive crutch. The formulation of meaningful abstractions as norms of law is an obsessive and all-consuming vocation beyond the reach of passers-by in politics who hurry for a passionate rendezvous with the delights of power.

We have not heard yet a reasonable explanation why the best acting Bulgarian laws : Law on Obligations and Contracts, Civil Procedure Code and Property law were adopted b/n 1950 –1952 i.e. in top Stalinist times and the Law on Normative Acts of 1973 in top totalitarian times.

06.01.2004 - Braykov’s Legal Office

Valentin Braykov