Close to the finish line?

REPORT AT A GLANCE

The Commission report acknowledges “strong political will to achieve deep and lasting reform” over the five years since Bulgaria joined, and sees the main challenge now as filling some key strategic gaps and ensuring effective implementation. But “the resolve to deliver the reforms has been variable”, and a more consistent implementation is needed “to join together disparate actions”. The report blames a lack of direction in policy for holding back progress and failing to build the necessary momentum in the reform process. Consequently, legal and constitutional reforms are incomplete, and important investments in the structures to fight organised crime have not led to the hoped-for results.

A new legal and institutional judicial framework has not made significant improvements in judicial accountability and efficiency, with excessively slow legal proceedings, and many important cases either not concluded, or not reaching dissuasive results. The report sees the deficiencies as a reflection of important structural, procedural and organisational weaknesses. It cites a recent consultation that “exposed stark disagreement among judges on the conditions for the application of preliminary detention of defendants in serious criminal cases” as an example of inconsistencies that provoke “substantial concerns”.

In the fight against organised crime, convincing results are still missing at both the pre-trial and trial phases, with many unsolved and delayed cases. The Commission cites a Europol conclusion that “organised crime in Bulgaria is unique in the EU to the extent that it exercises considerable influence over the economy which is a platform to influence the political process and state institutions”. Few important organised crime cases have received sentences, there have been acquittals “in important cases where evidence in the public domain raised expectations of convictions”, and “serious concerns must be raised regarding the poor results in uncovering contract killings”.

The Commission also records “particular concerns” over the fight against corruption, highlighting continuous delays and postponements at appeal court level in two emblematic cases involving fraud with EU funds, where long prison sentences had been handed down in 2010. “No satisfactory explanation has been found why the available procedural possibilities to accelerate these emblematic cases have not been actively pursued by the judiciary,” the report comments. Similarly, an administrative authority to establish and sanction conflicts of interest “has not yet been able to prove itself in convincing decisions in important cases”.