The Parliament will discuss amendments to the Judiciary Act on second reading. This is the first item on the agenda for today's plenary session.
Last week, the amendments were adopted on second reading by the Committee on Legal Affairs in the National Assembly at two consecutive meetings. The amendments relate to the criteria for selecting members of the judiciary.
The Legal Committee adopted that an elected member of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) cannot be a person who, within the previous term of office of the elected members of the SJC, was the Chairman of the Supreme Administrative Court or the Prosecutor General. It was also agreed that until the newly elected members take office, the plenum of the SJC, respectively the Judicial and Prosecutorial Colleges, shall postpone the adoption of personnel and permanent decisions if more than one year has passed since the expiration of the mandate of the elected members. It was also agreed that the Prosecutor General shall be assisted by up to three deputies.
The Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs also voted that the elections for new members of the SJC from the professional quota shall be held in the district courts with paper ballots. A proposal was also adopted to allow the early release of the Prosecutor General by the Minister of Justice, the President of the Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC), the plenum or the General Assembly of the Criminal Chamber of the SCC, no less than three members of the Supreme Judicial Council, the Ombudsman, no less than one fifth of the members of parliament and the Supreme Bar Council.
In a declaration on behalf of "We Continue the Change" (PP) regarding the amendments to the Judiciary Act, Velislav Velichkov warned that if the deputies make a mistake here, they will not achieve the desired result. He noted that dozens of proposals have been made by members of parliament on the bill, the main goal of which was to introduce qualitatively new criteria and procedures for the selection of the parliamentary quota of the SCC and to improve the organization and transparency in the selection of the professional quota. We can say that after two meetings of the legal committee, this goal has not been achieved at this stage, he said. Velichkov addressed "Progressive Bulgaria" and pointed out that they can still together elect a qualitatively new and independent composition of the Supreme Judicial Council, but political will and awareness of the decisive moment are needed, because the first step is the most important and it determines all the following ones.