The August 3 report by the special parliamentary committee investigating the restitution of property to Simeon Saxe Coburg, former prime minister and current leader of National Movement Simeon II (NMSII), offered several views on the subject how the tripartite ruling coalition works.

The committee, dominated by MPs from the three ruling parties – the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), NMSII and Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) - concluded that when Saxe-Coburg was given the properties under post-communist property restitution laws, there were no breaches of the law, as all actions by line authorities were based on a decision by the Constitutional Court considered relevant to the case.

In 1946 Saxe Coburg, then aged nine and in his capacity as the last Bulgarian monarch, was sent into exile together with his whole family by the newly established communist regime in the country. In 1947 a referendum was held which proclaimed Bulgarian as a socialist republic and all the properties of the monarchy were nationalised. In 1998, nine years after democracy was introduced to Bulgaria, the Constitutional Court declared the royal real estate nationalisation law to be unconstitutional, which provided a legal basis for Saxe-Coburg to reclaim some of these properties. The properties included several houses in the Rila mountains near Borovets ski resort and the Vrana residence, just outside Sofia, which Saxe-Coburg made his base after moving back to Bulgaria in 2001. The property issue became the focus of public, political and media attention particularly after Saxe-Coburg’s NMSII won the parliamentary elections in 2001 and Saxe-Coburg served as prime minister for the next four years. The then opposition BSP claimed that Saxe-Coburg had no right to own the property because there was a gap in the law and the sole decision of the Constitutional Court was not enough reason for Saxe-Coburg to have been given the properties. In the pre-election campaign for the 2005 parliamentary elections BSP promised its supporters that one the first things after winning the elections would be to review the mechanism of how Saxe-Coburg had become the owner of such vast areas of land. Land that made him one of the richest people in the country.

The BSP did win the largest share of votes in the elections, but not enough seats in Parliament to form its own government. This resulted in a coalition with the NMSII and the MRF which was explained by BSP leader Sergei Stanishev and current Prime Minister as “the necessary thing for Bulgaria in order Bulgaria to enter the European Union as scheduled on January 1 2007”. It was not a surprise when, as coalition partners, the BSP and the NMSII, decided to exclude from their priorities the issue of Saxe-Coburg’s property. However, almost a year after the elections, the BSP was forced by its supporters, by its pre-election promises, and most of all by the opposition, to do something about it. This led to the special committee being formed with the participation of MPs from all parties represented in Parliament. The work of the committee was harshly criticised by the opposition, who said that all the BSP was trying to do was to find a compromise by satisfying its supporters and NMSII at the same time. With the day of the final report nearing, speculation about the pressure to which the committee was being exposed started to appear in the Bulgarian-language media. The reason was the behaviour of committee chairperson, Plamen  Ranchev of the BSP. On July 20, Ranchev said in an interview with private national TV channel bTV that in his personal opinion, Saxe-Coburg held the properties unlawfully. “The properties were returned to Saxe-Coburg with no legal grounds for doing so”. This, according to Ranchev, could mean that the properties in question were still owned by the state.  “A special law should be adopted because there is a serious gap in the legal framework of Bulgaria especially about these properties,” Ranchev said. The current restitution laws could not be applied to crown property, Ranchev said.

By saying this, Ranchev appeared to be hinting that the committee might actually conclude that the restitution of Saxe-Coburg’s properties had been illegal. However, a day before the committee was due to publish its report, the media in the country published reports about meetings held in the office of Prime Minister Stanishev between representatives of the BSP and the NMSII to find a way out of the nearing crisis. Whether these reports were true or not  has not been proven, but the next day Ranchev and the committee led by him published a report  which did not include any of what Ranchev had told bTV on July 20. According to the report, there was nothing illegal in Saxe-Coburg’s ownership of the properties. However, the report noted that the prosecution could launch separate investigations and all interested parties could file court appeals on a case-by-case basis. This position of the committee was a decisive step back from what the BSP and its leader Stanishev had claimed before. What BSP achieved with the report was to secure peace in the coalition, averting a walkout by the NMSII. Ranchev was quick to act, and at a news conference after the report was released, said that “there is no bargain about Saxe-Coburg’s properties, or at least I do not know about one”. The opposition MPs criticised the report, describing it as a “disgrace”. Ekaterina Mihailova from the right-wing Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB) said in Parliament on August 4 that the DSB would urge Parliament to acknowledge formally that the “so-called royal estates have been repossessed without a law and to require the Cabinet to take action for their recovery to the State”. Mihailova described the report findings as “an attempt to legitimate Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s immovable properties” and argued that the ad-hoc committee was “pointless.” Furthermore, the DSB said in a declaration that, “to judge from the findings of a parliamentary inquiry committee, the BSP and the MRF have practically given away an enormous amount of state property to Bulgaria’s former king and former prime minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg, acting on a Constitutional Court judgment”. According to Yane Yanev, MP from the right-wing coalition United Democratic Forces, the report in this form would trigger “violent extra-parliamentary action” because it “implies a desire to downplay this exceedingly important problem.” According to Yanev, the ruling coalition would “suffer serious consequences” from this report and, even worse, it would damage this country’s image in Europe.” NMSII MP Borislav Ralchev defended the reports findings and said that it contained findings which adequately reflected the facts. The independent Petar Manolov said the report was a “political joke” and that the score between Saxe-Coburg and Bulgarian people was till equal. More colourful in his statements was Chetin Kazak from MRF who said that even in the love act both sides remain unsatisfied.

“Evidently, we are all dissatisfied with this report, and the Bulgarian public will not be satisfied, either,” said Hristo Biserov MP of the MRF. However, he said that the committee couild only act within the limits imposed on it by the law. The law in this case also reacted.

Several hours later,  Deputy Prosecutor Kamen Sitnilski said in an interview with a Bulgarian-language newspaper that the Prosecutor-General’s office would institute more than one case on the restituted property of the families of former Kings Ferdinand I and Boris III and their heirs within 20 days. “There is sufficient evidence of violations, Sitnilski said. ‘The prosecution office has been working on reports of violations for several months now”. He noted that the number of probes would depend on the location of royal estates and the information collected to check the officers involved in the restitution of Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s properties.