Bulgaria's Justice Ministry has put together a package of emergency measures to reform the judiciary, which involves changes in key legislation and scrutiny of the implementation of all recommendations made by the European Commission in its latest report published in July, Justice Minister Margarita Popova has said.

The proposed amendments are aimed at reforming the judicial system and cracking down on organised crime and corruption.

"It is possible that not all of the recommendations will be followed up by legislative amendments but we want to give a clear indication that we exercise constant monitoring," Popova told Dnevnik.

At a meeting with EU ambassadors on September 7, she mapped out 57 measures that were pending Government approval before they could be presented in Brussels during the upcoming visit of Prime Minister Boiko Borissov on September 9-10. Popova said that the set of measures was quite ambitious given the tight timescale until the end of the year.

At the top of the list, the Interior Ministry will join forces with the prosecution and the State Agency for National Security (SANS) to handle EU funds fraud, corruption and organised crime. The agreement between the three institutions was made at end-August and was expected to be sealed on September 8.

Second, reforms should be undertaken in the Supreme Judicial Council, whose functions were closely examined in the Commission’s report, which recommended that the council should "ensure objective performance assessment of all magistrates and review the ordinance on rules and criteria for appointments."

Third, legislative changes should be implemented to fulfill recommendations by the Commission to "pursue urgently the draft concept paper for a full redraft of the Penal Code; simplify criminal proceedings and to reduce excessive formalism; implement urgently the recommendations of practitioners to improve practice under the existing Penal Procedures Code."

The Justice Ministry said work on changes to the Penal Procedures Code was in an advanced stage and a bill of amendments would be presented in the near future.

Asked whether demands by The Netherlands for harsher sanctions on Bulgaria have been on the agenda at the ambassadors’ meeting, Popova said: "This issue should be discussed at another level. But it is high time we stopped listening to voices from abroad and hear our own citizens, who have been longing for change for 20 years now."

Source: Dnevnik