site.btaEight Joint Chambers of Commerce in Bulgaria Reiterate Call from Last Year for Genuine Judicial Reform

Eight Joint Chambers of Commerce in Bulgaria Reiterate Call from Last Year for Genuine Judicial Reform

Sofia, June 29 (BTA) - In a position statement addressed to the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of judicial reform and the Justice Minister, eight business associations Thursday reiterated their calls for real and substantial judicial reform. "The judicial reform is far from complete and the process must continue for the simple reason that this is a pre-condition for the Bulgarian nation to achieve true prosperity," the statement goes.

The document is signed by the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria, the Bulgarian-Swiss Chamber of Commerce, the British-Bulgarian Business Association, Confindustria Bulgaria, the French-Bulgarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Advantage Austria Sofia, the Canadian-Bulgarian Business Network and the Norwegian-Bulgarian Business Group.

The business associations say that they welcome the important steps Bulgaria has made with changes to the Constitution and the Judiciary Act made in 2015 and 2016. "However, these changes were only the beginning, as they do not really address certain fundamental concerns."

They see the independence of the judiciary, transparency and accountability of the prosecution, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the judicial process, e-justice and legal education reform as the most important elements of real and substantive judicial reform.

"All political actors appear to agree that the judiciary should be independent, but there is insufficient political will to carry out the reforms necessary to ensure that judges are fully and completely independent from political influence," the statement says. The signatories argue that the prosecution should not have a role in the judges's career and the courts's organization and point out that despite some changes, the final step of giving judges full autonomy was not taken and channels for possible political influence remain.

According to the business associations, one fundamental concern with the latest judicial reform is that "the prosecution was left virtually as uncontrolled as before" - which they say is without precedent in Europe. "We absolutely support the independence of the prosecution but also wish to emphasize that a real separation of powers must have appropriate checks and balances - independence without accountability should not exist in a truly democratic society." The statement goes on to voice deep concern "by the lack of sufficient accountability on the part of the Bulgarian prosecutor's office, which creates the perception of dependence of its actions on the decisions, possibly arbitrary, of one or more individuals".

"We believe that wider public debate is merited as to whether the prosecution should be separated from the judiciary and accountable to the executive and/or the legislative branches of power (through further decentralization, reporting obligations, and real sanctions for arbitrary investigations, for instance), so that the prosecution in Bulgaria is ultimately accountable to society," the business associations say.

They also argue that what they call "unacceptable delays" in completing the pre-trial phase and resolving the case in court in countless instances "institute a severe problem undermining the system as a whole".

Additionally, the general principle of random allocation of cases in both the prosecution and the courts needs to be reinforced with more internal accountability and transparency.

The business associations are convinced that the development and implementation of a true e-justice system and the modernization of the legal education in Bulgaria and the improvement of its quality are "absolutely essential for the judicial reform to be truly comprehensive and successful".