The Central Election Commission (CEC) must carry out the re-calculation of the election results it has been tasked with by the Constitutional Court. This will show whether there are any changes in the distribution of seats in the 51^st National Assembly.

• Constitutional Court to make public the results of the re-count of the votes at 2,204 polling stations

The deadline for this expired on 10 March, but the state-run company Information Services failed to comply with it, handing the USB memory sticks it was given by the Constitutional Court, containing the data from the expert reports from 2,024 polling stations, over to the prosecutor’s office instead without asking for the permission of the CEC or the Constitutional Court.

In an address broadcast by public service TV BNT, Constitutional Court President Pavlina Panova was adamant that making the work of the Court conditional on the actions or inaction of other public bodies is inadmissible. The CEC set down another deadline, 3 PM on 12 March, for Information Services to finish off its work on entering the data and handing them over to the institutions.

National Assembly President Nataliya Kiselova has convened an extraordinary meeting of the National Assembly’s Presidents’ Council, as well as of parliament to discuss the matter this afternoon.