Eight Candidates for Five Seats: What the Hearing Revealed About the Prosecutors’ College

The hearing of the candidates for the parliamentary quota in the Prosecutors’ College of the Supreme Judicial Council has concluded. Interestingly, for the first time, none of them is a serving prosecutor. The eight contenders brought different combinations of judicial, academic, managerial and political-administrative experience. The differences became most apparent in the specificity of their proposed solutions, their attitude toward institutional and personnel dependencies, and their answers regarding controversial aspects of their professional biographies.

Stefan Milev: A View from Both Sides

Milev stood out with extensive experience both as a prosecutor and as a judge, complemented by his leadership of the Sofia District Court during a period of crisis. He identified specific problems: pre-formed majorities within the Supreme Judicial Council, secondment as a parallel career path, the quality of competitions, and the imbalance between the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office and the first-instance prosecutor’s offices. He proposed redirecting some of the positions at the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office to the most heavily burdened units. He answered the critical questions directly. He denied the claim, presented as a rumor, that he had issued voting instructions at the behest of Sotir Tsatsarov, and distinguished his professional contacts from personal dependencies. He also did not conceal a disciplinary sanction imposed by him as a manager and later overturned by the Supreme Administrative Court. His presentation left the impression of a candidate who knows the prosecution service from the inside, but can now also assess it from the position of a judge.

Krasimir Komsalov: Practical Personnel Solutions

Komsalov focused on nepotism, the judicial nomenklatura, formal evaluations and excessive secondments. His specific proposals included relieving members of competition commissions of other duties and introducing a more objective assessment of workload and quality. Questions addressed to him concerned his election as president of the Pazardzhik District Court, his attitude toward the decisions of general assemblies, and allegations of pressure on employees related to the „Trelix“ system. Komsalov denied the latter and referred to an audit that had found no violations of labor law. His answers were calm and management-oriented, without attempting to evade the controversial issues.

Ivan Kalibatsev: Strong Rhetoric and Questions About His Personnel Approach

Kalibatsev called for „cleansing the judiciary from within“ and spoke about the appointment of relatives, privileged secondments and subjective competitions. He has extensive experience as an administrative head, but the language he used raises the question of how such a pledge would be translated into clear and equally applicable procedures. The candidate confirmed that he knew representatives of the political force that nominated him from Plovdiv. Attention was also drawn to the pending procedure for president of the Plovdiv District Court, in which he is challenging the lawfulness of the general assembly that supported another candidate. His answers were categorical, but left open the question of how he would combine firm personnel control with the trust of the professional community.

Milena Karagyозova: Moderation and the Human Factor

Karagyozova focused on the remuneration of court employees, delayed competitions and the subjective application of otherwise existing criteria. In her view, many of the problems could be solved under the current rules if they were applied in good faith. She described a judge serving on the Prosecutors’ College as potentially more independent when electing a prosecutor general. Her answer to how she had been selected as a candidate was more hesitant—she initially said she did not know, but later clarified that MPs had contacted her.

Ekaterina Salkova: An Academic Concept with Less Managerial Specificity

Prof. Salkova proposed separating preparation from the administration of competitive examinations, assigning different weights to questions, and limiting prosecutors’ public statements on pending cases. She objected to including the state examination grade in the competition score, citing the lack of a uniform standard among universities. At the same time, her harsh overall assessment of the quality of some legal dissertations sounded more like academic criticism than a personnel solution. The argument that disputes surrounding the prosecutor general would diminish if an honest person were elected also leaves the need for sustainable institutional safeguards in the background.

Andrey Yankulov: A Strong Diagnosis and a Political-Administrative Background

Yankulov outlined a bleak picture of the prosecution service—networks of influence, controversial personnel decisions and career „shortcuts.“ His experience as a prosecutor, lawyer and representative of the non-governmental sector explains the sharpness of the diagnosis he presented. His previous participation in various political cabinets predictably prompted questions about his distance from the executive branch. Yankulov stated that he had never been a member of a political party and had held his positions as an expert. His diagnosis was strong, but some of the proposed solutions remained formulated in more general terms.

Veselin Vuchkov: Accessible Ideas but Controversial Criteria

Prof. Vuchkov proposed annual competitions for vacant positions, bringing back interviews, and reviewing secondments to specialized prosecutor’s offices. He clearly stated that new cases like „The Notary“ or „The Eight Dwarfs“ would signify the failure of the next Supreme Judicial Council. More controversial is the idea of including the state examination grade in the competition score despite the different standards among universities. His biography includes work as a deputy minister and minister in a political cabinet, while his practical involvement in the day-to-day personnel management of a court or prosecutor’s office is more limited.

Emil Dechev: Radical Proposals and a Risk of Losing Focus

At his second appearance before the commission—this time as a candidate for the Prosecutors’ College—Dechev defended keeping the prosecution service within the judiciary, rotation between departments, and a more genuinely random allocation of case files. The idea of allowing an injured party to initiate pre-trial proceedings following a prosecutor’s refusal was described by Dechev himself as „exotic“ and would require significant legislative changes beyond the Supreme Judicial Council’s immediate powers. His accounts of unnamed junior magistrates with professional deficiencies also raised the question of whether such cases should not be handled through the established institutional procedure. His simultaneous participation in the procedures for both colleges and his previous work in political cabinets raise additional questions.

What the Hearings Revealed

The hearing showed that what matters most is not the number of reforms proposed, but whether the proposals fall within the powers of the Supreme Judicial Council and can produce a verifiable result. The most fully developed candidacies appeared to be those in which professional experience was linked to specific measures, clear mechanisms and a readiness to answer controversial questions directly. In other cases, strong diagnoses were not always followed by solutions within the council’s powers, while certain biographical and political-administrative circumstances remained in need of further assessment.

Source: trud.bg