site.btaPublic Figures Slam Planned Closure of Secret Police Files Committee, Call it "Defence of Oligarchic Model"

Closing the secret police files committee would deprive the public of its right to transparency, public figures behind the 2006 Clean Voices campaign, which led to the declassification of communist-era State Security documents, said at a press conference at the BTA National Press Club on Tuesday. The press conference was promoted by government plans to close down the committee by the end of the year and to transfer its activities to the Archives State Agency as outlined in the draft 2026 state budget, published on the Ministry of Finance’s website. 

The official name of the committee is is Committee for the Disclosure of Documents and for the Declaration of Bulgarian Citizens' Affiliation to the State Security and Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian People's Army

According to Georgi Lozanov, who is one of the founders of the Clean Voices campaign, closing the secret files commitee is "a defence of the oligarchic regime". "This committee should not only continue to exist - it should become an institute of memory for the repressive past, because this repressive past is best researched through the State Security archives," he stated.

"The power-holders often speak about dismantling the oligarchic regime, but it is the very same regime [as the one during communism] that has undergone new post-communist transformations. It is impossible to dismantle today's oligarchic model of governance unless we understand its genealogical link to the Soviet regime," Lozanov said.

He described the archives of the former State Security Service as "the black box of Bulgaria's crashed Soviet regime." "After every crash, you open the black box to find out what happened and how that repressive regime functioned - a regime that was later officially declared criminal by an act of Parliament," he said.

According to Lozanov, it was essential for society to have access to the secret police files. "Over the past 20 years, people have developed a healthy degree of caution on this issue - a moral wariness toward those who were connected to the secret services, especially informers," he added. 

"Now they are not even explaining why they are abolishing the committee. They are not addressing the public; instead, they are quietly slipping it into the Budget Act," he said.

According to him, a complete process of re-Sovietization is beginning in the country, in which it is said that this past [the time of the communist regime in Bulgaria] is not only not criminal, but is largely subject to justification and restoration, said Lozanov. 

He said there used to be a "black market" for secret police files. "It was very convenient not to disclose all secret police files, but take out and make public some from time to time", said Lozanov. 

The secret police files law was the piece of  legislation adopted with the broadest consensus in the last 25 years, said lawyer Alexander Kashumov, director of the Access to Information Program Foundation and a participant in the process of adopting the law in 2006 and in the Clean Voices campaign. He argued that this represented an exceptionally high level of consensus - one that had neither existed before nor has been achieved since. In the years that followed, however, attacks on this law did not cease, indicating that many people felt affected by it, he said. In 2012, the law was challenged before the Constitutional Court. A few years later, an attempt was made to initiate an interpretative case before the Supreme Administrative Court with the aim of overturning the established and consistent case law on opening the documents.

"I witnessed firsthand how difficult it was for the secret police files committee to piece the puzzle together, one fragment at a time. It was a painstaking process, the full extent of which the public never had a chance to understand," he added.

A total of 20,565 people were checked for affiliation with the totalitarian services in 2025, 28,406 people - in 2024 and 24,374 people - in 2023, said Hristo Hristov, founder of Desebg.com which publishes research focused on the State Security archives. "Bulgaria has the most modern archive in Eastern Europe, where nearly 15 km of State Security documents are collected", he pointed out. "Transferring such an archive to another institution means at least two years of problems with access to it, because the holdings will have to be inventoried", he added.

Hristov presented data from the latest survey by Exacta Research Group, according to which 48.8% of respondents believe that there should be an independent state body responsible for vetting individuals for affiliation with totalitarian secret services, while 23.3% do not.

"When the archives were opened, then-Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev said that society had the right to know who is who. Now, with the Committee's closure, what are they trying to tell us - that we no longer have that right?" Hristov asked.

The 2026 draft state budget, published on the website of the Finance Ministry, says that by September 15, 2026 a proposal must be prepared for legislative amendments to abolish the secret police files committee and transfer its responsibilities to the Archives State Agency.