Ivo Atanasov: Zoteva cannot be recalled by a new presidential decree – 2024-08-21 10:41:39

/ world today news/ Due to the moral incident with Betina Zoteva, we called another member of the CEM – Ivo Atanasov, to ask him if Mrs. Zoteva could be recalled from her current position.

Mr. Atanasov specified that it was not a good tone to comment on another colleague, but he still agreed to explain the legal situation with mandates and recall.

“When the Radio and Television Act was adopted at the time, it was believed that the independence of the members of the regulator was guaranteed: 1. By mandate and 2. By the fact that once elected or appointed, the member of the CEM could not be recalled by the body, who elected or appointed him, i.e. by the president and the parliament. So were the councils from Brussels. And this is understandable, otherwise each new majority in the parliament will choose its own majority in the regulator”.

“It is clear that Bettina Zoteva cannot be recalled by a new presidential decree. She has a 6-year mandate that began in May 2016. The CEM also cannot terminate her mandate early. In Art. 30 of the Labor Code there are several grounds for premature termination of a mandate, one of which is interesting – in case of incompatibility with the requirements for membership in the CEM. These requirements are formulated in Art. 26, but Bettina Zoteva does not fall there”, explained Ivo Atanasov.

“Regarding the insistence of many people on social networks that Zoteva be released on the basis that she does not meet the requirement of public authority, Ivo Atanasov says: “But how do you measure authority, and in such a way that it can hold up in court?! The criminal CEM rulings stand up in court, especially when they are related to something measurable, for example, the exceeded duration of advertisements. By law, it is 12 minutes per hour, if we find that at some hour it was 12 minutes and 30 seconds, we also fine the court recognizes our decision. But when it comes to, for example, hate speech, violation of public morals and other concepts that are neither defined nor unambiguously measurable, our decisions fall to the court. The same is the case with the public authority of a member of the CEM . The court can easily overturn such a decision, and then lost benefits will be sought. Therefore, I do not think that the CEM can do anything more than to comment on what happened on Tuesday.”