site.btaParliament to Discuss Amendments to Judiciary Act at Second Reading

The National Assembly is set to debate amendments to the Judiciary Act on second reading. The item is first on the agenda for Thursday’s plenary sitting.

The amendments were approved on second reading by the National Assembly Legal Affairs Committee at two consecutive meetings earlier in June. The changes concern the criteria and procedures for electing members of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) and related decisions in the judiciary.

The Legal Affairs Committee approved a provision under which an elected member of the SJC may not be a person who, during the previous term of office of the SJC’s elected members, served as President of the Supreme Court of Cassation, President of the Supreme Administrative Court or Prosecutor General.

It also approved a provision under which, until newly elected members take office, the SJC Plenum, the Judicial Chamber and the Prosecutors Chamber must defer personnel decisions and decisions with lasting effect if more than one year has passed since the expiry of the term of office of the elected members. The Committee also approved a provision that the Prosecutor General will be assisted by up to three deputies.

The Legal Affairs Committee also voted that elections for new SJC members from the professional quota in district courts should be held by paper ballot. It also approved a proposal allowing the Prosecutor General’s early removal from office to be initiated by the Minister of Justice, the President of the Supreme Court of Cassation, the SJC Plenum or the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office of Cassation, at least three members of the Supreme Judicial Council, the Ombudsman, at least one fifth of MPs, and the Supreme Bar Council.

In a statement on behalf of the Continue the Change parliamentary group on the amendments to the Judiciary Act, Velislav Velichkov warned that if MPs made a mistake at this stage, they would not achieve the desired result. He said dozens of proposals had been submitted by MPs on the bill, whose main purpose was to introduce qualitatively new criteria and procedures for electing the parliamentary quota of the SJC and to improve the organization and transparency of the election of the professional quota.

Turning to Progressive Bulgaria, Velichkov said they could still jointly elect a qualitatively new and independent composition of the Supreme Judicial Council, but this required political will and awareness that the moment was decisive, because the first step was the most important and would determine all the following ones.