Bulgaria Nationalists Move to Call Referendum on Turkey EU Accession

The Bulgarian nationalist party VMRO is making formal steps to call a referendum on Turkey’s EU accession.

On Friday, the party will formally notify the Parliament on its intention to start collecting signatures in order to request the holding of a national referendum, as required by law.

The VMRO is initiating the motion on the grounds of the Direct Participation of Citizens in State Authority and Local Government Act adopted in 2009. If the VMRO party manages to get enough signatures, it will call the first referendum in Bulgaria’s post-1989 history.

The last referendum in Bulgaria was held in 1971 in order to support the adoption of the new constitution of the regime of communist dictator Todor Zhivkov, and was largely fictitious.

The Bulgarian Parliament will be obliged to schedule a referendum if the VMRO gets 500 000 signatures of eligible Bulgarian voters.