The end of the green racketeering is coming

Supreme judges seise the Constitutional Court because of Natura 2000 drafted by “the ecologists”
The end of the green racketeering in Bulgaria is drawing near, after a panel of the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) seised the Constitutional Court (CC) in relation to a text in the Biodiversity Act (BA), Trud writes.
The members of the CS must decide whether Article 12, paragraph 7 of the acting BA is violating the Constitution.
The legislative text says that no one can appeal the orders of the Ministry of Environment and Water for designation of the protected zones from the European Ecological Network Natura 2000.
As Trud has reported many times, our country is among the leading in the European Union as regards the area protected by Natura 2000. Almost 35 percent of the country’s territory is in protected zones. This affects more than 1 million private property owners. Currently these people cannot even file a law suit against the fact that their land has been included in protected zones by the country without them being asked or compensated for the limitation of their rights to their property.
The SAC turned to CC because of appeals lodged by owners who cannot use their properties included in Natura 2000 as intended. This is in breach of Article 17, paragraph 3 of the constitution stipulating that private property is inviolable. According to the SAC judges it is possible that Article 120, paragraph 2 of the main law is violated. This paragraph says that physical and legal persons have the right to appeal all administrative acts that concern them, excluding those explicitly stated in the legislation.
 
The “ecologists” are carrying out nationalization
 
In 2019 Trud published an investigation about the designation of the protected zones in Bulgaria. The “greens” virtually nationalized more than a third of the territory of the country without compensating the owners of the land and forests included in Natura 2000. And so, Bulgaria is the only country in the EU that has not compensated its affected citizens.
In contrast to the European practice where Natura 2000 is implemented by the scientific institutes of the Member States, in Bulgaria, during the period 2005 – 2007 the cabinet of the three-party coalition entrusted the mapping of the protected zones to “green” non-governmental organizations. For this activity the “ecologists” received BGN 9 million from the state budget. Regardless of the huge amount of money, in order to maximize their profit, the “ecologists” replaced the European methodology failing to meet the major requirement to take into account ecological, cultural, social and economic factors and to organize a wide informational campaign to raise awareness among the Bulgarian population.
 
The Methodology
 
The European rules require real data on the distribution of plant and animal species confirmed by field research, photographs, GPS points, completed forms and trackers (records of the routes taken by the teams). Documents are required to positively confirm the presence of the species in the respective zones. None of this was ever implemented. Instead, the “ecologists” used forecast data, i.e. suppositions about the presence of the plant or animal species.
The stories, assumptions and theoretical models used by the “greens” are not scientific facts. Due to this deceit and data manipulation, our country will always be subject to criminal proceedings in Brussels. Because Natura 2000 is not built on the basis of scientific data but rather through falsifications.
For these reasons the Bulgarian Natura 2000 includes areas for protection encompassing industrial plants, factories, mines, quarries, cemeteries, industrial areas and dumps. The aim is to include in the European network as much territories as possible. By doing so the Greens are securing their business for decades to come. This business is connected to the preparation of reports for Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) and Compatibility Assessments over which they have a monopoly.
 
The Lies about the Biodiversity
 
The constant suggestions of “the ecologists” that the biodiversity in Bulgaria is threatened by human activity are far from the truth. There is now way for our flora and fauna to have degraded, because Bulgaria suffers the most serious demographic crisis in the framework of the EU. For the past 30 years the population has decreased by 2 million. Whole regions are depopulated, hundreds of villages have disappeared. This means that vast territories remain without any economic activity and there is nothing to stop biodiversity from developing. Meanwhile, due to the large percentage of Natura 2000 and the deliberate mistakes in it, non-existing plant and animal species and their habitats are protected for a lot of money. Additionally, due to the eco-racketeering to allegedly protect these species, dozens of investment projects worth hundreds of millions of levs are stopped or delayed.
For the purposes of eco-racketeering some protected zones are deliberately set in places where investment proposals have been made.
 
The question of SAC to CC
 
The law suit for which the CC was seised concerns appeals of affected citizens and companies against the order of the Minister of Environment of 12 December 2017 defining the Complex Kaliakra protected zone. The zone is in the localities of the towns of Kavarna and Balchik and the villages of Tyulenovo, Kamen Bryag, Sveti Nikola, Balgarevo, Bozhurec and Topola with a total area of 483.363 square km of which 473.272 square km are marine space. There are similar cases all over the territory of the country.
According to SAC, Article 12, paragraph 7 of the BA fully limits the protection of the right to property.
“The explicit prohibition of appealing the order under Article 12, paragraph 7 of the BA leads to the inability to ascertain whether the enforced limitations contradict the principle of proportionality which is a dimension of the rule of law,” the supreme judges write. They state that the prohibition also contradicts Article 120, paragraph 2 of the Constitution by depriving the owners of judicial review of the administrative act infringing on their rights and interests.
 “This infringement is direct and immediate due to the circumstance that the enforced limiting measures result from the order itself. The prohibition of appeal of the order does not provide any opportunity to inspect the procedure of preparation, announcement and publication of the order for the establishment of a protected zone.
The limitation of access to court protection cannot concern the realization of main rights and freedoms of the citizens, unless it is determined by a high constitutional value, which, according to the court, is not the present case. In excluding particular administrative acts from court appeal the legislator remains bound by the general constitutional principles and administrative acts concerning main constitutional rights, such as the right to property, cannot be excluded from appeal in court,” the SAC panel wrote.
This year the Constitutional Court issued a decision abolishing the unchallengeable nature of the General Development Plans and allowed the affected parties, i.e. the property owners, to defend their rights in court.
The unchallengeable nature of the orders under the Biodiversity Act should be considered by analogy. And if the CC is coherent in its practice, a similar decision is expected.
This will put an end to decades of “green racketeering” performed by “ecological” non-governmental organizations through Natura 2000, mapped in inflated by them.
Source: Blitz.bg