Borissov demands Plevneliev to veto the Judiciary System Act

“I will welcome it if President Rosen Plevneliev does two things with the Judiciary System Act (JSA) - to veto it and to return it,” said Prime Minister Boyko Borissov on Thursday.

He added that the GERB party (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria) will not support politically the option for this Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) to elect the Prosecutor General. According to Borissov, career bonuses should not be allowed in this SJC.

“I hope the President will return the bill on Tuesday or Wednesday. Then a procedure for its repeated voting should be initiated immediately,” said the Prime Minister. He noted that, in general, neither the President nor the Prime Minister are entitled to comment on the SJC because it is an independent body.

Once it was pointed out that it was just GERB which submitted the amendments to the Judiciary System Act, Borissov said: “And GERB will submit the changes now”. When asked why the amendments were accepted at all, the Prime Minister replied that there were many arguments "for" and "against".

According to Borissov, one cannot say that the MPs have adopted something wrong, but his personal reasons for not accepting this text are ethical.

The day before, Rosen Plevneliev said that a position on the law will be released within a day or two.

From the words of the Prime Minister and the President, however, it did not become clear whether the position of the Government that the election of the next Supreme Judicial Council will be conducted not directly by the magistrates but by delegates’ assemblies will be revised as well.

In several letters to the Bulgarian authorities, the European Commission insisted that the direct vote of members of SJC must be introduced as early as this autumn. So far, the Ministry of Justice justified the impossibility of the introduction of the direct vote with technical reasons.

About a month ago, President Rosen Plevneliev said that it is more important for the nominations for the Supreme Judicial Council to be transparent, than for a direct election to be introduced. The Head of State said that it is better more information to be collected and released about each candidate for member of the SJC - the high-profile cases which they have ruled upon, their judgements, their property status, who has nominated them and for what reasons. Then, Plevneliev preferred to refrain from commenting on the proposed amendments to the JSA, which would allow the current SJC to elect a new Prosecutor General.

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