The votes of ruling party GERB and ultra-nationalists Ataka carried through approval in Parliament of the first reading of changes to Bulgaria’s Code of Criminal Procedure on January 27 2010.
 
The Bulgarian Socialist Party-dominated Coalition for Bulgaria, right-wing Blue Coalition and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, a former minority partner in the previous government, voted against.
 
Introducing debate on the amendments, Justice Minister Margarita Popova said that the current version of the code was too formalised and hampered Bulgaria’s efforts to fight crime.
 
The changes are intended to speed up court procedures and make it more difficult to adjourn trials to return them for pre-trial investigation. They also provide for stand-in lawyers to take the place of defence counsel who absent themselves from hearings, a phenomenon which frequently has led to numerous postponements of trials.
 
It also provides for a role for police in investigations, rather than – as now – requiring them to stand back awaiting the involvement of investigators.
 
Mediapool said that NGOs and human rights organisations have criticised some of the proposed changes, saying that they violate the European Convention on Human Rights and would be open to challenge in court in Strasbourg.
 
The Blue Coalition said that the bill was flawed and should be redrafted by experts, while the Movement for Rights and Freedoms said that the bill cut back human rights. The socialist opposition said that the amendments failed to strike the correct balance between the need for speeding up trials and for protection of civil rights.
 
The second reading debate on the bill is expected in about a month’s time.