site.btaPresident Radev: Bulgarians Have Long Ceased Relying on CVM Reports, They Shift Responsibility

President Radev: Bulgarians Have Long Ceased Relying on CVM Reports, They Shift Responsibility

Sofia, November 16 (BTA) - President Rumen Radev commented Thursday that Bulgarians have long ceased to rely on the European Commission reports on Bulgaria's progress in reforming its judiciary and fighting organized crime and corruption - because they shift the responsibility. "What matters for Bulgarian people is to be able to see for themselves that we have a working judiciary and combat against corruption and injustices," the President said a day after the European Commission released its latest report under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM).

Radev also said that the real success will come when Bulgarian politicians start reporting to the Bulgarian people and not to Brussels.

According to the ruling parties and officials of the judiciary, the new report has been the most positive ever. The opposition said that the report slams Bulgaria for its absolute failure to make progress on any of the recommendations in the previous report.

Radev said that the explanation for why power-holders and opposition have such vastly diverging takes on the report is in the report's florid wording.

He agrees that there are no new recommendations - which the power-holders see as a sign of positive assessment - but pointed out that no major progress is established on old recommendations either, especially in respect to solving, preventing and prosecuting high-level corruption.

The President was also asked to comment GERB's resolve to lift the statutory limitations for probing possible offences during the privatization process since the start of transition from a planned to free market economy in the 1990s. He said that it is important to focus on the present and the future "because while are looking into who did what in the past, major public procurements take place".

The President also said that the important question is what mechanisms will be used to solve, prevent and prosecute corruption-related crimes in the future.

The CVM report was also commented by the pro-reform President of the Supreme Court of Cassation, Lozan Panov, who said that Brussels' report cannot change the reality and the judicial system in Bulgaria, and that the monitoring mechanism should remain in force.

Panov said that the report is more political than technical.

He argued that even though the CVM is failing to bring about results in Bulgaria, its scrapping may cause a rise of euroscepticism among Bulgarians, who trust the EU institutions more than they trust the national institutions.

He sees the report as a step towards an upcoming scrapping of the monitoring mechanism: not because the recommendations have been fulfilled but because this mechanism cannot produce the desired results.

The report does not make new recommendations - not because they are unnecessary but because, maybe, nobody has any illusions that they will be fulfilled, he also said.

He also said that the report was written in a way that will give Bulgaria a peace of mind during its Presidency of the EU Council in the first half of 2018.

"For ten years now, the diplomatic language used for spelling out the problems, has apparently been misunderstood by the addressees. I believe that Bulgaria has not fulfilled the recommendations and fails to meet the criteria for normal judicial environment," Panov said.