site.btaDemocratic Bulgaria Proposes Hearing of Key Figures After Fresh Disclosures About Country's European Prosecutor

The Democratic Bulgaria parliamentary group will move for a hearing of the country's suspended European prosecutor Teodora Georgieva and other major figures over information that there was official correspondence from Bulgaria to EU institutions for Georgieva to be preferred over the other candidates for the post, to which she was eventually elected in 2020. The group's Deputy Floor Leader Bozhidar Bozhanov broke the news on Friday, speaking to journalists in the corridors of the National Assembly.

According to Democratic Bulgaria, the hearing should also involve Boyko Borissov, Prime Minister at the time; Emilia Rusinova, Sofia City Prosecutor from August 2016 to February 2020 and acting Sofia City Prosecutor from May 2025 to the present; Danail Kirilov, Minister of Justice from April 2019 to August 2020; and Dimitar Tsanchev, then Permanent Representative of Bulgaria to the European Commission.

Bozhanov's statement comes hours after the website Capital.bg reported that the former GERB government of prime minister Boyko Borissov exerted pressure in favour of Georgieva's bid for the position of European prosecutor from Bulgaria and used Tsanchev's services to make its case to Brussels.

Bozhanov commented: "The documents are most likely classified, but they exist." This, he said, confirms the backstage link between the government and Petyo "the Euro" Petrov, a former investigating magistrate and a notorious power broker in a criminal network for influencing the Bulgarian judiciary known as "The Eight Dwarfs". On Thursday, the Sofia City Court found Petrov guilty of forging documents and ordered him to pay a fine of EUR 2,556.

In Bozhanov's words, this is "a huge scandal", exposing the fact that "commands were issued to the Bulgarian government from Petyo the Euro's sofa and reached Brussels".

Discussing an ongoing controversy over the National Assembly's rules of procedure, Democratic Bulgaria Floor Leader Nadejda Iordanova noted that the ruling majority did not back down from its proposal that 48 signatures should be required for an ad hoc committee to be proposed in the plenary. "Next week, the rules go to the plenary. We will continue to insist that this requirement for 48 signatures be removed," Iordanova said.

According to Bozhanov, "ad hoc committees are necessary if we want to shake up the networks of dependency in the state".