Parliament can elect and sack the head of the State Agency for National Security (DANS), the Constitutional Court has ruled. Judges threw out a request from 59 MPs in the 51st National Assembly to have the disputed parts of the DANS Act struck down as unconstitutional.
All 12 judges on the court took part in the ruling, with Sasho Penov as rapporteur. Atanas Semov, Yanaki Stoilov and Nevin Feti filed a dissenting opinion on Article 8, paragraphs 1, 5 and 6 of the DANS Act.
The court said it's up to lawmakers to decide whether the heads of a body like DANS are appointed by the president or elected by parliament. There's no clash with the constitution when a law gives parliament the power to elect and dismiss the heads of state bodies, just as there's none when a law lets the president appoint and dismiss other officials. The only condition, the court said, is that this must not breach constitutional principles or cut into constitutional powers.
The court also said that electing the head through parliament doesn't turn the agency's work into a political matter. The DANS Act requires the agency to stay politically neutral, and its chairman, even though chosen by the majority in parliament, is not politically tied to it, since he acts under the law and to carry it out, the ruling states.
The disputed changes affect the heads of three services: DANS, the State Agency for Technical Operations and the State Intelligence Agency. Before the changes, the president appointed them by decree on the government's proposal. Now parliament makes the choice, though the proposal still comes from the cabinet. The number of deputy chairmen at each agency rises from two to three.
At the end of 2025, the Constitutional Court agreed to hear three cases brought by a group of MPs from the 51st National Assembly, according to a notice on the court's website.