site.btaBulgarian Vice President Iotova Confers with Secretaries General of Council of Europe, PACE

Strasbourg/Sofia, October 19 (BTA) - Bulgarian Vice President Iliyana Iotova conferred in Strasbourg with Secretary General of the Council of Europe Marija Pejcinovic Buric and with Wojciech Sawicki, Secretary General of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the press office of the Bulgarian Presidency said on Saturday. This year the Council of Europe, which has 47 member states, celebrates its 70th anniversary.

The main topic of the talks with Sawicki was the post-monitoring mechanism which has applies to Bulgaria for 19 years now. Iotova voiced disagreement with the practice of adding new remarks and new requirements to Bulgaria in each fresh report, which she said makes the process "an endless mechanism". Iotova also said that over the past few years the monitoring on the part of the Council of Europe to a large extent replicates the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism of the European Commission which has applied to Bulgaria in the past twelve years.

The next Council of Europe's post-monitoring report on Bulgaria will be reviewed by PACE in June 2020. Iotova and Sawicki voiced a hope that this report will be the last.

At the meeting with Buric, Iotova was familiarized with the vision for the development of the Council of Europe. The two officials concurred that stronger unity is needed by the member states of the organization. It was also noted that the texts according to which the Council of Europe works are outdated. The participants in the meeting noted that mechanisms need to be developed that pre-date crises and provide adequate solutions, so that the Council of Europe can pursue its mission of defending human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

By way of achieving stronger unity and coordinated actions among the member states, Iotova suggested holding a fourth summit meeting of the Council of Europe member states which has not been organized for 14 years now. Such a meeting was suggested by the Bulgarian parliamentary delegation to PACE where it received broad support.