The meeting of the ruling coalition near Bansko mountain resort on May 10 and 11 disappointed in providing concrete results on the structural reforms within the Interior Ministry. The three ruling parties – the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) and the Movement for Rights (MRF) – had to compare notes and agree on three issues: what to do with Interior Ministry’s Chief Directorate for Combating Organised Crime (CDCOC), to find the right place for the agency that will control the use of special intelligence methods and who will exercise control over the newly formed State Agency for National Security (SANS).

On the first issue, the Government was forced to take measures, as the directorate has become a synonym for the ties that top police officers have with organised crime.

The situation became urgent after CDCOC deputy head Ivan Ivanov was cited as an example of how international organised criminals corrupt and seek to corrupt public officials by a US department of justice report published on April 25. Ivanov was arrested on March 17 after he was caught reporting to businessmen about police investigations against their firms, starting the debate on what should be done with the CDCOC.

This debate was supposed to get an answer at the Bansko meeting, but nothing like this happened. The ruling parties decided to simply postpone making a decision by a week after citing procedural reasons, such as the time needed to amend the Interior Ministry Act.

A day after the meeting, Interior Minister Mihail Mikov threw some light on what CDCOC’s fate might be. Speaking on private broadcaster bTV, Mikov said that the first thing he would do after the meeting was to dismiss Ivanov, who was technically still deputy head of CDCOC despite being under arrest.

Unlike his previous comments that there was no mafia in Bulgaria, Mikov this time said that the country had serious problems with organised crime and corruption and part of it included journalists, politicians and businessmen. He did not say anything else about CDCOC’s place in the ministry’s system, except that the directorate had to be reformed.

He simply repeated what Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev told the news conference on May 11 in Bansko. In general, two things became clear after the meeting in regards to the CDCOC. The ruling parties still had to decide on what to do with it and that the only change so far has been the one that happened on April 30. On that day CDCOC head Kiril Georgiev was demoted to deputy head, and Petar Vladimirov, the current head of CDCOC’s coordination of information and analysis section, was appointed in his place.

Mikov’s idea for having the ministry’s internal control unit under his direct control was also left without consequences at the Bansko meeting.

As the Government’s media service said, “the ideas proposed at the meeting would be summarised in the course of a week and put forward as concrete legislative amendments”. Until then, all that the media and the society can do is speculate on the few things that were said in Bansko.

Such a subject for speculation were Stanishev’s words on another sensitive issue – the control and use of special intelligence methods. After all the information about Ivanov’s arrest was leaked to the media by anonymous sources, the same happened to the records of a session of Parliament’s committee on internal order and public security, which together led to the resignation of Mikov’s predecessor, Roumen Petkov.

All three parties agreed that the two ministry directorates that are currently in charge of wire-tapping were going to be merged in a new structure. The problem came when the ruling parties failed to agree on who would have the control over the new body. Mikov’s position became clear two days before the Bansko meeting, when he asked for the new structure to remain under the ministry’s control, which contradicted the policy of “complete structural change within the ministry”, announced by Stanishev when Petkov resigned from office.

One of the ideas was to put the control on surveillance under the jurisdiction of Justice Ministry or SANS.

Again nothing was achieved on this front in Bansko. “A working group would be formed that will discuss the possible ways to restructure the ministry’s surveillance services,” Stanishev said after the meeting. There was one thing about which Stanishev was certain: “There is a need for change, especially because we need to put an end to the paranoia that everybody in this country has been put under surveillance.”

Indeed, from what became clear in Petkov’s last days as minister, less than 10 per cent of the data gathered using special intelligence methods ended up as evidence in court, which raised “serious doubts”, according to President Georgi Purvanov.

One of NMSP’s ideas was to have a fixed price every time the police used special intelligence methods as a way to strengthen control on their use, but it was rejected by the BSP and the MRF.

Control was one of the key words used by Stanishev in Bansko regarding the country’s special services, and SANS in particular. When it started work on January 1 2008, SANS was given powers to exercise its role as the country’s main weapon in fighting high-level corruption and organised crime.

Stanishev’s response to criticisms from the opposition levelled at that time that SANS was virtually under no one’s control was that Parliament would have the right to supervise its work. This control was exercised just once in the past five months and it involved the row around Petkov. SANS head Petko Sertov was called before Parliament to confirm whether Petkov had contacts with businessmen who were under police investigation. Sertov’s positive answer brought Petkov one step closer to being sacked and the fact that it was also leaked to the media was not well taken by the BSP.

Although this was a fine example of how Parliament had exercised its control over the “super agency”, now it seems that the ruling parties have other ideas that might deprive the opposition from knowing what SANS is doing.

“Three options have been discussed on who should exercise control over the special services,” Stanishev said in Bansko. One option was for Parliament to keep control by setting up an ad hoc committee on SANS. A second option was for a separate independent body to be formed that would oversee SANS and the third option was for Parliament to form a sub-committee that would exercise control over all special services, not just SANS. Again, Stanishev said that discussions on the three options were still under way.

In general, the Bansko meeting resulted in only spreading out ideas on possible changes in the Interior Ministry. None of the “deep structural changes” announced by Stanishev in April were fleshed out in detail. With two months left before the next European Commission’s interim report on Bulgaria’s progress with judiciary reform and the fight against corruption and organised crime, the ruling parties decided to leave it all to the experts and working groups.