18.01.2012
It is important that senior appointments satisfy the highest standards of transparency and objectivity in order to inspire public confidence into the Bulgarian judiciary. This is the message of Ms Catherine Day, Secretary General of the European Commission in her letter to the Bulgarian Institute for Legal Initiatives (BILI).
The letter is an answer to eight non-governmental organisations – including Program the Development of the Judicial System for their initiative and the letter sent on December 19, 2011 regarding the recent nominations of judicial inspectors at the Inspectorate to the Supreme Judicial Council. “It is obvious that the Parliament is pursuing a policy of opacity and makes appointments in the judicial power in procedures lacking enough information about the candidates, motives on behalf of the nominating MPs, real public hearing, and objective and thorough evaluation of their relevant qualities, including professional capacity and behaviour. All this excludes the public scrutiny and plays a key role for the vitiating of the Bulgarian justice and the lack of trust in it. Such appointments procedure does not only eliminate a real selection between the competent and incompetent, on the contrary, it turns into main selection factor backdoor deals, hidden promises and dependences. Thus, instead of getting the deserved public empowerment even good candidates are reduced to being political protégés. That is not a question of simple absence of democratic culture, but a consistent reproduction of the model spilling over vicious political influences into the judicial power”. This was part of the message of eight judiciary NGOs sent in an open letter to Tsetska Tsacheva, Chairperson of the Bulgarian Parliament, Catherine Day, Secretary-General of the European Commission, Boiko Borissov, Prime Minister and Diana Kovacheva, Minister of Justice.
Catherine Day stated that the way appraisals, appointments and elections within the judiciary are carried out of direct relevance to the Commission's assessment of progress in judicial reform in Bulgaria under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism. ”The follow-up to a specific recommendation on this matter included in the July 2011 report under the CVM will be carefully examined by the Commission”, Catherine Day writes.
“Civil society organisations play an important role in judicial reform in Bulgaria, and I would like to thank you for keeping us informed about your perspective on recent developments“, the Secretary-General of the European Commission states.
