The judicial system in Bulgaria in general does not differ from the judicial systems in most of the member countries of the European Union, according to a preliminary report published by the Bulgarian-based NGO the Centre for Liberal Strategies (CLS), with the support of British embassy in Sofia and the Supreme Judicial Council. The report – named The Judicial System: independent and responsible. Indexes for the effectiveness of the judicial system – was publicly presented on April 20 in Sofia.
In its October 2005 report on Bulgaria’s readiness to join the EU, the European Commission (EC) said: “Important legislative steps have been taken in relation to the judiciary. However, progress in the reform of the pre-trial phase remains limited and the justice system continues to suffer from a lack of accountability. The procedures for administering justice remain cumbersome and slow”. Today, with less than three weeks before the next EC report, scheduled for May 17, Bulgarian society and institutions are more and more concerned about the stage and the reform of Bulgaria’s judiciary and how this will affect the country’s chances for EU membership.
Bulgaria is scheduled to join the EU on January 1 2007, but for the past several months, various EU officials and MPs from the European Parliament have emphasised that the country’s entry might be postponed or perhaps it would accepted in the EU with a safety clause, because of the state of Bulgaria’s judiciary.
The CLS report deals with several indicators on judicial activities in Bulgaria.
It focuses on the the pre-trial phase of the judicial system and compares the duration of the pre-trial and court procedures in Bulgaria with those in current EU countries.
The first conclusion of the report is that in contrast with the Bulgarian public opinion that the country’s judicial system is slow, ineffective and corrupt, analysis shows a different picture. A large part of the Bulgarian judiciary activity actually meets EU standards, and when it comes to the effectiveness factor, the systems are basically the same.
An example of this is the duration of the court procedures and the pre-trial phase, according to the report. The average duration of civil cases is 350 days and for cases of general character it is roughly 835 days, which includes the pre-trial phase. However, the CLS report emphasises that Bulgaria’s judicial system has a heterogeneous character and the country is not among the leaders when it comes to this index. Bulgaria has a position somewhere in the middle of the scale of duration and effectiveness of the judiciary, which does not indicate that the country is lagging behind, as it is the general perception. The report concludes that there is a certain “inter-institutional” time-lag in situations when court cases have to be transferred from one court to another. The report sees here a possibility for improvement.
The pre-trial duration of criminal cases of roughly 541 days, according to the report, means that the pre-trial phase occupies the most time in court procedures, which for such cases is 835 days. However, the CLS report does not hurry to draw conclusions from this fact, because such time differences could be explained with effectiveness, as demonstrated recently by the Prosecutor-General’s office about the sentences that had come into effect and the cases that had finished with acquittal sentences. The ratio is 80 per cent for effective sentences. This could mean that the Prosecutor-General’s office is keen on spending more time on a case to avoid any chance of a possible acquittal sentence. This alone prolongs the pre-trial phase of the judiciary.
The fact that the judicial system operates relatively well does not mean that there are no problems in various areas. These areas, according to the report, are the fight against organised crime, money laundering, and corruption among high-level state officials.
“The system obviously has problems in these vital areas,” the report says.
As for the financing of the judiciary, the report says that it is adequate and has improved in recent years. When compared with the judicial system funding that most EU members receive, the Bulgarian judiciary drops behind, but this can be explained by the differences in living standards, which are not in favour of Bulgaria.
It is of crucial importance for the judiciary in Bulgaria to develop a mechanism for annual quality monitoring of the “final product” it produces. The report sees as a positive step in this direction the recent amendments to the constitution, according to which high court magistrates will have to give annual reports on their activities to Parliament. The problem, however, with these amendments, according to CLS, is that the amendments envisage each of the two high-court chairpersons and the Prosecutor-General presenting reports only on their institutions, not about the system in general.
For such a general view to be achieved, CLS does not suggest new changes to the constitution. The only thing needed is the establishment of a dialogue between the institutions. Such a dialogue could form a certain kind of mechanism, through which the Supreme Judicial Counsel or its representatives introduce to Parliament the general view on the system.
Real problems, according to the report, occur in the areas of combating organised crime and corruption. A most worrying fact, according to the Centre for Liberal Strategies, is that there is hardly anyone convicted for being part of an organised crime group. This leads to the conclusion that the investigating authorities do not work systematically and encounter difficulty in trying to infiltrate crime networks. As a result, criminals are convicted for individual crimes and not for their activity as part of such a network.
The same applies in the area of money laundering, where the ineffectiveness of institutions is also worrying, according to the report. The system also tarries when it comes to revealing the so-called contract murders. There are hardly any convictions in this area.
The report labels progress in fighting corruption as insufficient. Over the period 2003-2005, the number of convicted people for corruption activities has remained basically the same. The same applies to the number of pressed charges. The ratio is 300 to 700. What is more important, according to CLS, is that a more precise statistic be implemented, so that corruption would be separated by scales, such as corruption among high-level state officials and corruption on a lower level. An example of why such a division must exists is the fact that the judicial system has a laissez-faire attitude with the way political parties in Bulgaria fund their campaigns. Cases of such origin virtually do not exist.
Overall, the Centre for Liberal Strategies report lists several major problems of the Bulgarian judiciary.
On the top of the list is the problem of a lack of co-ordination among institutions when it come to providing information about the system.
The lack of systematisation in categorisation of the cases ranks second.
Lack of outside evaluation of the system and interest and debate on this issue is also a problem.
The judicial system does not provide information about the motivations or contents of the verdicts or any other kind of statistics about the court cases, such as the nationality of the defended, whether he or she has a lawyer, or the accused’s material status.
