site.btaThink-tank Deplores Bulgaria's "Counter-corruption Ice Age"

Attempts to devise an effective counter-corruption formula in Bulgaria date back before the country's accession to the European Union in 2007. Still, Bulgaria remains the only member of the bloc where no one in the upper corridors of power has been sentenced for graft. Meanwhile, counter-corruption institutions were created in the executive and judicial branches of power and strategies were adopted. No real results have been achieved yet, Bilyana Gyaurova-Wegertseder, Co-Founder and Director of the Bulgarian Institute for Legal Initiatives (BILI), says in an analysis titled Bulgaria's Counter-corruption Ice Age, published on the BILI website on July 2.

Gyaurova-Wegertseder says that the "ice age" began in 2018, when the Counter-corruption and Unlawfully Acquired Assets Forfeiture Commission (CCUAAFC) was set up. It was the result of merging four separate agencies at a time when they were beginning to function and amass practical experience, and most importantly, to be seen as independent. The effect of the merger was zero, except that the CCUAAFC was used to intimidate politicians, businesspeople and activists inconvenient to the Establishment.

The "ice age" has reached deeper levels since then, the analysis goes. In 2023, the 49th National Assembly adopted a new anti-corruption law which provided for the establishment of two new commissions. It seemed like a reversal to the situation before 2018, but the new Counter-corruption Commission (CCC) would have investigative functions as well. The CCC never got to work. A planned complementary law, which was supposed to regulate the legal relations concerning the forfeiture of unlawfully acquired assets (the so-called civil forfeiture), was never adopted either, as the National Assembly found itself at a loss about the procedures and the rules for electing the CCC.

This is important, because, in addition to making laws, the legislature is tasked with electing authorities in the executive branch, which are in charge of determining and steering the policies on many aspects of our life, the analysis goes. This concerns not just the infamous regulatory authorities, but also institutions in the judicial system. The rule that the office holders in such institutions should serve a fixed term has been overlooked for many years now. Institutions such as the Inspectorate of the Supreme Judicial Council, the Commission for Personal Data Protection and the Police Files Commission, among many other authorities, have been working more than twice as long as the standard recruitment cycle. The National Assembly is failing to perform its important function of restaffing the country's governance corps. Ignoring the "fixed-term recruitment" rule is a form of corruption. What is more, it can be described as strategic corruption, the analyst argues.

Assuming that the whole process started from endemic corruption, that is, corruption within certain areas of political, social, economic and cultural life, and then went through a situation of state capture, in which mechanisms of power were consolidated within political (or quasi-political) elites, at present we are at the level of strategic corruption.

Strategic corruption is a calculated effort to manipulate entire systems in the executive and judicial branches of power over the long term to derive certain benefits at the cost of public confidence and social equality. There are many examples, from legislation serving specific political parties, businesses and individuals, through instant removal of people from leadership positions as soon as they become inconvenient, to equally fast installment of convenient replacements.

Strategic corruption undermines public confidence in the institutions of the state. And when citizens see that their leaders milk the system for their own personal benefit, their trust in democracy erodes. Before Bulgarian politicians possibly opt for new elections, the National Assembly should do some real work, at least by electing some agencies whose restaffing is long overdue, the analyst concludes.