site.btaParliament's Legal Committee Approves in Principle Mechanism for Investigating Prosecutor General

The parliamentary legal committee adopted on first reading a bill of amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code and the Judiciary Act, which sets in place a mechanism for investigating the prosecutor general. The bill was prepared by the caretaker government.

The amendments were backed by the committee in a 12-1 vote with eight abstentions.

The draft amendments address a number of other issues as well, such as the introduction of judicial review of a prosecutor's refusal to initiate pretrial proceedings, the efficiency of criminal proceedings and others.

Justice Minister Krum Zarkov said the amendments should be adopted by Parliament because the time is right and people want this matter finally resolved. Before the vote, Zarkov commented that the adoption of the bill by the legal committee would be good news and would show that the people's representation has strength and will, "and then let the Constitutional Court decide on it".

Marin Marinov MP (GERB-UDF) asked whether the judicial reform would be over if all proposed bills of amendments in the judicial laws - not only these two - are adopted. "A large part of Bulgarian people want the issue of judicial reform to be closed," Marinov added. 

Milen Mateev MP (Continue Change) said the bill of amendments providing a mechanism for investigating the prosecutor general, will become law by the end of the life of the current Parliament. "If this happens, the historic significance of this Parliament will change and it will become the only Parliament that has made a huge step towards judicial reforms," he said. He believes that the reasoning to the amendments answers all the concerns about their constitutionality. 

The MRF said it would abstain when the mechanism for investigating the prosecutor general is put to the vote. MRF deputy Hamid Hamid said his party will put their draft constitutional amendments back on the agenda of the parliamentary groups "to start the real reform of the judiciary". 

Petar Petrov MP (Vazrazhdane) said that judicial reform will be completed "when a sense of justice is created in Bulgarian society and I think we are still far from it".

Alexandar Nikolov of Bulgarian Rise said that there is no way judicial reform can be carried out by a National Assembly that does not have the strength to form a majority and elect a cabinet to carry out the reform. In his words, there is no way to do reform in the current conditions of "institutional schizophrenia". He added that the bill providing for a mechanism to investigate the prosecutor general should have been introduced by a regular cabinet and not a caretaker cabinet.

Prior to the debate on the bill, the MPs heard from Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev, who described some of the provisions as unconstitutional.

At the public discussion a week ago, Deputy Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov said that if the proposed changes are pushed through as they are, the prosecution service would take the matter to the Constitutional Court.