site.btaJudicial Reform Should Focus on Increasing System's Accountability, Transparency, NGO Head Tells BTA

December 30 (Dimitar Abrashev of BTA) - Small changes can achieve a lot in the judicial reform, with a focus on increasing the accountability and transparency in the judicial system, Bulgarian Lawyers for Human Rights (BLHR) Executive Director Stoyan Madin said in a BTA interview.

In his opinion, a decision on a closure of the specialized courts and prosecution offices would be a clear political sign that what those jurisdictions have done over the last decade is totally at odds with the European notions of justice, fairness and human rights. The pending cases must be addressed by a legislative solution. "Avoiding a repeat of what happened, however, would require a very deep-going analysis," the head of the NGO pointed out.

Madin welcomes Justice Minister Nadezhda Yordanova's idea to peg the budget of the prosecution service to its performance. "It makes no sense at all to increase the budget allocations for the prosecution service time and again while the prosecutorial decisions submitted to court constantly decrease," the lawyer argues.

Prosecutors' decisions should be publicly accessible under an expressly established procedure, and prosecutors' refusals to launch investigations, especially into cases of public interest and such affecting rights guaranteed by the European Human Rights Convention (EHRC), should be subject to judicial review, Madin says, referring to other essential aspects of the reform. A supervising prosecutor's refusal to disclose their decision must be motivated and should be challengeable in court, too, similar to cases of access to public information. The secrecy of investigation cannot be invoked when a prosecutor refuses to initiate pretrial proceedings because criminal proceedings are practically not yet in place, the interviewee points out.

Despite the millions spent on e-justice, its launch has failed yet again and now depends on the good will and understanding of an individual judge because those who are supposed to manage the system have not created conditions for its functioning, the foundation's Executive Director says.

The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) needs to be reconsidered from top to bottom, starting with its administration, whose staff size has nearly doubled over the last ten years. Magistrates' competition-based appointments need to be changed: the SJC now deliberately delays competitions in order to keep panels of posted magistrates. Performance appraisal should be reconsidered, too, especially regarding magistrates whose decisions have been found by the European Court of Human Rights to violate the EHRC. Last but not least, the Inspectorate with the SJC has definitely proved pointless and must be thoroughly reformatted. In the interviewee's opinion, the reform should entirely stop magistrates' posting because judges or prosecutors who are underqualified and have inappropriately entered the system or have been promoted there become susceptible to pressure from their administrative heads or the SJC. Moreover, this will make it impossible to deliberately circumvent competitions and handpick the "right" holder for a particular position.