site.btaParliament Chair Tsacheva: An Acceptable Concept of Punitive Criminal Policy Should Be Created

Parliament Chair Tsacheva: An Acceptable Concept of Punitive Criminal PolicyShould Be Created

Sofia, February 29 (BTA) - According to Parliament Chair Tsetska Tsacheva, Bulgaria should draft a generally acceptable concept of punitive criminal justice and this should become the foundation for the drafting of a new Criminal Code.

Tsacheva spoke Monday at a conference titled 'Punitive Criminal Justice: Traditions and Prospects' hosted by the St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia. She said that the matter of which actions should remain crimes and which should be referred to as offenses, as well as the degree to which offenses should be decriminalized should be put on the agenda of a serious discussion. She added that numerous international agreements to which Bulgaria is a party should also be taken into consideration, she said.

Bulgaria needs a new Criminal Code reflecting modern thinking, Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Kuneva said, adding that the texts in question concern terrorism and cyber-attacks.

Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov said the key to judicial reform does not mean one more member of the prosecutor college. Judicial reform is a Judiciary Act, procedural laws and motivated staff. Any revisions to the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Criminal Code that have been made in part, they have been done under the pressure of the status quo or under political pressure and on concrete occasions, he added.

From its inception in the present form, the General Directorate for Combatting Organized Crime does not have a single case focused on corruption. The highest level reached is chairperson of an agency, Tstatsarov said. He warned that the prosecution is just a step away from being conserved entirely and from becoming something it should not turn into in any society.

If Bulgaria is embroiled in the spiral of transfer of responsibility between court and prosecution to avoid namely responsibility, then the introduction of a judicial board will definitely be necessary, Supreme Court of Cassation President Lozan Panov said.

The subject of establishing a single European prosecution was not widely discussed in Bulgaria but the idea of monitoring the prosecution did, Panov added.

Since he has been President of the Court of Cassation there has not been a single case of corruption against representatives of the corridors of power, Panov said. Citing one of the cases against former interior minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov, who was sentenced at first instance and was subsequently acquitted by the Supreme Court Cassation, Panov said this caused polemics because of the contrast of judgments. So people logically ask themselves whether last-instance acquittals are not a political correction of the political responsibility of previous instances.

Only blind people can think that judicial reform does not begin with a reform of the Interior Ministry, Constitutional Court President Boris Velchev said.