site.btaFormer ECHR Judge Yonko Grozev Nominated for Constitutional Court

Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) has nominated Yonko Grozev for a member of the Constitutional Court on Parliament's quota Wednesday. The nomination was submitted to Parliament's Constitutional and Legal Matters Committee, said the parliamentary press office. 

Grozev's nomination was put forward in a latter to Parliament by a large number of renowned Bulgarian lawyers and public figures, and CC-DB backed them, the party says. The  letter signatories pointed out that sending former ECHR judges to the Constitutional Court is a good practice embraced by many European countries, which has proven to enhance the capacity of the national courts.

According to the information available on the ECHR website, Yonko Grozev was born on December 27, 1965, in Sofia. He is a Master of Law from the Faculty of Law in Sofia University of Sofia. He became a lawyer and was registered with the Sofia Bar Association in 1993. He was a founding member of the Board of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia between 1993 and 2013. In 1995, he earned an LL.M. (Master of Law) from Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was also a founding member of the Board of the Access to Information Foundation (1996 and 2002); member of the Legal Advisory Committee of the European Roma Rights Centre (1998-2010); member of the Board of the Media Development Center (2000-2003); member of the Board of the Open Society Institute in Sofia (2001-2004); member of the Board of the Mental Disability Advocacy Center, Budapest (2002-2006); member of the Board, Bulgarian Lawyers for Human Rights (2009-2013); member of the Board of Open Society Justice Initiative, New York (2011-2015). He has been lecturer and trainer for extensive training meant for practising lawyers on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (since 2001). He headed a working group with the Justice Ministry tasked with drafting a strategy for institutional reform aimed at improving the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (2007-2008). In 2009, he was in a working group drafting the first legal aid legislation. He has served as Chair of the Board and founding member of Risk Monitor, Sofia (2009-2015).
 
From April 13, 2015 to April 12, 2024, he was a Judge of the European Court of Human Rights, including a tenure as Vice-President of Section from August 13, 2018 to August 12, 2019, and then President of Section from May 18, 2020 to May 17, 2022.