site.btaJustice Minister Georgiev: No-confidence Vote Motives on Justice Scant, Unsubstantiated

In the “justice” section, the motives behind the no-confidence motion against the government are scant and offensively unsubstantiated. “I do not know who wrote them, but they did not do a good job,” said Minister of Justice Georgi Georgiev from the parliamentary rostrum on Wednesday regarding the no-confidence vote against the government.

Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) and Morality, Unity, Honour (MECh) MPs submitted a motion of no confidence in the Rosen Zhelyazkov Cabinet on September 12. The sponsors specified that the motion is over the Cabinet's "failure of internal order and security, justice, and state capture".

Georgiev added that the section on justice contains a total of 13 pages, three of which are copied from European Commission reports. The recommendations of the Commission in its Rule of Law Report are cited, but only the negative aspects were taken from the summary, while paragraphs acknowledging this cabinet’s contribution were deliberately omitted, he explained.

Minister Georgiev handed former justice ministers Nadezhda Yordanova and Atanas Slavov recommendations from these Commission reports from recent years, pointing out that the recommendations addressed to the current government are the same, and therefore cannot serve as valid grounds for the no-confidence vote.

He also displayed a printout of a 2023 vote concerning Article 10 of the Anti-Corruption Act, which showed that the then-government unanimously voted for its preservation. Georgiev noted that now part of the arguments in the no-confidence motion criticise the current cabinet for maintaining this same provision, which he believes to be inconsistent.

“Justice is a system of rules, not a matter of ‘our people’ and ‘their people’. It is not about one person moving from one position at the expense of another. For justice to function, it must have clear rules and people of honesty and integrity to apply them,” the Minister stated.