The proposal to transfer the Files Commission to the State Archives Agency has sparked a new political dispute. Speaking on NOVA, long-standing commission member and journalist Ekaterina Boncheva said she saw a personal motive behind the idea as well.
Boncheva said she had compared the current law with the proposal by Deputy Prime Minister Ivo Hristov. In her view, an independent body elected by the National Assembly and accountable to Parliament would be replaced by a state agency dependent on the Council of Ministers.
“In place of an independent commission, elected by the National Assembly by a majority vote and accountable to Parliament, we are getting a state agency dependent on Hristov and the Council of Ministers,” Boncheva said.She pointed out that the chair of the State Archives Agency is appointed by the Council of Ministers. In her words, this raises the question of whether the future structure will retain the necessary independence when making decisions on investigating and declaring affiliation with the former security services.
Questions about the documents and access
Boncheva also raised the question of how the archives would be handled if employees in the new structure did not undergo checks by the current security services in order to gain access to classified information.
She referred to three rulings by the Constitutional Court, which she said ruled out the possibility of such a commission being part of the executive branch. According to Boncheva, that is precisely what would happen if its activities were transferred to an agency whose chair is appointed by the government.
The journalist also rejected the claim that interest in the files had run its course. She said the commission continued to investigate people holding public office, while citizens were submitting applications for access to the documents. In her words, the workload was such that some applicants had to wait.
The claim of a personal motive
Boncheva linked the proposal to circumstances surrounding Ivo Hristov’s father. She said that during an investigation in 2020, he had been identified as an officer of the Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of People’s Defence and had not challenged the decision.
According to her, years later, Hristov, by then a member of the European Parliament, filed a lawsuit against political scientist Ognyan Minchev over publicly disclosed information about his father’s affiliation. It was this sequence of events that led Boncheva to conclude that the proposal might contain “a personal element of revenge.”
“I do not believe that children and grandchildren should be held responsible for their fathers and grandfathers, but in some of them a mentality is reproduced that is holding us back,” she said.
The idea of closing the commission as an independent structure and transferring its activities to the State Archives Agency was included in the transitional and final provisions of the 2026 budget. The National Assembly tasked Deputy Prime Minister Ivo Hristov with preparing the legislative amendments, with the initial deadline set for September 15, 2026.