The Consultative Council on National Security had a long session yesterday on issues it had previously discussed – the army’s modernization and the risks which Bulgaria faced within today’s global environment. The sittings of the Council are closed and usually are assessed by the following statements. This time those showed that the debate had been unusually intense and had opposed sharply the governing GERB party on one side, to President Rumen Radev and the major oppositional force of the socialists (BSP) on the other. Chair of GERB’s parliamentary group Tsvetan Tsvetanov accused the president (who is also the supreme commander of the army) that his preliminary project of conclusions presented at the sitting had almost proposed the taking of first steps for exit out of the EU and NATO.

The outraged reaction of socialist leader Kornelia Ninova was that Tsvetanov had afforded to throw accusations, already heard in parliament and concerning not only the head of state, but also her party. In her words, Tsvetanov’s intimations that the Bulgarian Socialist Party or the presidential institution worked for another country’s interests were almost accusations of crime and he would bear the responsibility for that.

The presidency determined Tsvetanov’s statement as manipulative, but abstained from refutation. Instead, it published the full text of the initial proposal for a stance and the CCNS, made by Radev, in order for the society itself to be convinced in first hand information. Last year the CCNS had been once again turned into a place for political confrontations – key GERB representatives didn’t appear at the sittings on high level corruption and the leaders of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms and Volya left the event prematurely. Then the council had to be summoned again.

At the same time we shouldn’t perhaps feel too dramatic about what happened yesterday. After all, the CCNS debate is consultative; its decisions are not mandatory and are binding to the extent, reflecting the attitude of the major political and state factors to the issues of the respective agenda. The mandatory decisions on such matters are taken with shared responsibility by the other state institutions in charge – the parliament, the executive authority and the president.

PM Boyko Borissov who is also chair of GERB has not so far commented yesterday’s situation. However, while voicing to the public his stance on another topic, he underlined that “Bulgaria is EU, Bulgaria is NATO”. That will be the spirit as well in the Council of National Security headed by the premier himself, where the actual decisions are taken.