BJA standpoints

14 Sep 2018

Declaration of the Bulgarian Judges Association in connection with decision of the Supreme Judicial Council held on 13.09.18

DECLARATION
of the Bulgarian Judges Association in respect of the decision adopted by the Plenary of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) to abstain in the vote on the proposal put forth by the Executive Board of the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary (ENCJ) to suspend the membership of the National Judiciary Council of Poland
(Krajowa Rada Sądownictwa, KRS)
Members of the Council,
In connection with your decision, adopted at the meeting of the plenary of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) held on 13 September 2018, to abstain in the vote proposed by the Board of the European Network of Councils of the Judiciary (ENCJ) to suspend the membership of the National Judicial Council of Poland (Krajowa Rada Sądownictwa, KRS), we express our concern by the evident reluctance of the SJC to openly declare its position on manifest violations of fundamental principles and values, such as court independence, irremovability of judges and the rule of law in Poland.

 

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20 Mar 2018

Letter to the Bulgarian Prime Minister

"...You will soon host a high-level meeting in Bulgaria between senior EU officials and the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In the wake of the failed coup in July 2016, tens of thousands of Turkish citizens were arrested, and reports continue to pour in from various legitimate sources that many of them were detained unlawfully, without any evidence, and subsequently tortured to forcefully obtain confessions of alleged involvement in the attempted coup. Among them are more than 3000 Turkish judges and prosecutors arrested simultaneously, most having remained in detention for more than eighteen months. We naturally condemn any attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government by anti-constitutional means in in a sovereign country, including Turkey. At the same time, we firmly believe in the above democratic values and would like to rely on you, in your role as the host of the forthcoming meeting, to become their advocate before the President of Turkey, calling for respect for the right to life, the prohibition of torture and degrading treatment, and the right to liberty and fair trial of each Turkish citizen against whom charges of involvement in the attempted coup in Turkey have been brought, including in particular fellow judges and prosecutors..."

 

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10 Jul 2017

Declaration regarding the Bill amending and supplementing the Judiciary Act dated 04.07.2017

"...The Bill submitted to the Bulgarian Parliament hinders the free association of magistrates in professional organisations while at the same time prohibiting them from sitting on the governing boards of organisations jointly established with representatives of other legal professions, such as the Bulgarian Union of Jurists. There is hardly any need to put forth arguments demonstrating the self-evident absurdity of such a statutory prohibition..."

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09 May 2017

Conducting checks to ascertain a magistrate’s integrity and the absence of conflict of interest

Letter to the Head of the Inspection service of the Supreme Judicial Council regarding the rules of conducting checks to ascertain a magistrate’s integrity and the absence of conflict of interest.

"... We further request the ISSJC to draw up and publish the standard, which it intends to apply in cases that call for conducting integrity checks to ascertain actions that harm the reputation of the judiciary or checks that compromise the independence of judges, prosecutors and investigators. A failure to do so would mean that the approach followed may not be based on principles and considerations deriving from those principles, but on the personality of a magistrate, which opens the doors to inadmissible arbitrariness."

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17 Jul 2016

Open Letter regarding the situation in Turkey

The Bulgarian Judges Association is following with particular concern and worry what is happening to our colleagues in Turkey. Within the framework of the international cooperation between judicial organizations, we were informed that the 2745 Turkish judges and prosecutors that were removed from office yesterday are now expecting to be held in custody. We express our strong confidence that these colleagues could not participate in any subversive activities against democracy and law. We hereby state our irreconcilability to all forms of violent impact and declare our firm opinion that the fight against such actions should not include sacrificing the freedom and security of our colleagues - judges and public prosecutors.

The Managing Board of the Bulgarian Judges Association
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18 Jan 2016

Open Letter to the European Commission regarding the latest developments in Bulgaria’s progress

"DEAR SIRS
 
This is to bring your attention to the latest developments in Bulgaria’s progress under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism and the implementation of the measures outlined in a series of CVM reports.
 
Following the country’s accession to the European Union in 2007, a mechanism to monitor progress in the area of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) and the fight against corruption and organised crime was put in place. Its goals, inter alia, were to facilitate the process of reporting to EU institutions on the state-of-play and developments in these areas and consulting the Bulgarian authorities on the necessary actions to be taken to implement the recommendations received with a view to achieving the desired results. The eight consecutive annual reports drawn up since the CVM was first put in place leave a lasting impression of a permanent lack of efficiency in tackling problems in critical areas, despite multiple amendments to legislation.
 
The updated Strategy for continued reform of the judiciary adopted in the autumn of 2014 was a condition precedent for the Commission’s trust in Bulgaria as stated in the CVM Report dated 28 January 2015 . Despite expectations that the declared position and intentions of the national authorities would translate into concrete actions with a foreseeable result, in 2015 no progress was achieved..."
 
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11 Dec 2015

Open letter in relation to the vote by the National assembly on 09.12.2015 for the Law for amendment and annexation of the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria

Dear Bulgarian citizens,
    
    The Bulgarian Judges Association is addressing you directly for the first time. The ongoing series of statements which we have been sending to various competent institutions have not led to significant results. We have been making such statements in regard to scandalous judicial appointments, we have been calling for vital oversight because of the suspicion of management and corruption, and we have been highlighting the behavior of certain magistrates that raises ethical questions.
    We have been constantly pointing out repeated scandals that undermine the credibility of the judicial authorities, and which underline the necessity of a deep and determining reform. This year, for the first time in years, specific proposals for a positive and lasting change were placed into a Parliamentary constitutional reform process which was transparent for all of society to see. The claims that these proposals would not lead to an improvement of the judicial system, and thus to an increase in the feeling for justice of the citizens, are not true. The quality of judging depends on the qualities of the people working in the system. Therefore and quite logically, the most significant thing is the oversight of the judicial authority itself – because it is this authority that determines what kind of people, and with which professional qualities, will be selected to go into the judicial system, and which of them will then be promoted and appointed to senior management positions.  
    One of the most important of these proposals – which guaranteed true responsibility and accountability to society, rather than the chronic absence of such oversight, and which provided a real chance for an honest and truly independent judiciary – was rejected with the Decision of the National Assembly in it’s final reform vote yesterday on 09.12.2015.
     It is important to make clear exactly what happened on that day and how it affects every single citizen of Bulgaria. The long-awaited changes that were in the draft for constitutional amendment, and which were supported by the large majority, were instead replaced with ‘accepted corrections’ which will not result in a real change; will not give any guarantees for the rule of the law and the independence of judges; and will not eliminate the widely suspected dependencies within the judicial system...
 
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26 Dec 2013

Letter to the all members of the XLII National Assembly regarding the nomination of the General Inspector

"... it is important to reiterate that the three-day time period for candidate nomination envisaged in the procedural rules, particularly when coinciding with the Christmas and New Year holiday period, creates an impression of opaqueness. Furthermore, even if discussions between the political parties represented in Parliament had taken place on the need to reform the Inspection Service of the judiciary and on the particularly high professional standards, which the selected nominee must satisfy given the nature of the high judicial office, the debate surrounding the selection process has yet again remained outside public scrutiny..."

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