in Strasbourg; Bulgarias Justice Minister, Miglena Tacheva.
Photos: ARCHIVE
Justice Minister Miglena Tacheva on October 8 promised thorough transparency in the procedure of nominating a candidate for Bulgarias seat at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
On that date, a public council convened by Tacheva met, facing a deadline of a week to finalise the criteria and procedures for nominating the candidate.
The public council meeting was a sequel to Bulgarias humiliation when the countrys previous three nominees were rejected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
As The Sofia Echo reported on October 5, PACE rejected the nominations of former justice deputy minister Margarit Ganev, law professor Momyana Guneva and lawyer Snezhinka Sapoundjieva. PACE said that the three nominees were not qualified in terms of the required criteria.
Speaking on Bulgarian National Television after the decision was made public, Yunal Lyutvi, head of Bulgarias delegation to PACE, said that the three candidates had failed a test set by PACE and had failed to show sufficient qualifications in the area of human rights.
This immediately raised the question of what selection criteria Bulgaria had followed in coming up with the first three candidates.
The entire selection procedure took place when Georgi Petkanov was justice minister. Petkanov resigned from office in May 2007, citing personal reasons.
Under Petkanov, the Justice Ministry was arguably the most non-transparent public institution. Information was given on a monthly basis, and there was no guarantee of a response to applications filed under the Freedom of Information Act. For example, the ministry hardly ever bothered to give any kind of information on international adoptions, one of the most important areas of its jurisdiction. In the case of the three ECHR nominations, the Bulgarian-language media and professional community took great pains to describe to the public the lack of transparency practised by Petkanovs Ministry at the time of the nomination procedure.
In April this year, the ministry announced that the application process for Bulgarias representative in the ECHR had started. Nothing further was said until May 4, when the ministry published a list of nine names saying that these were the approved candidates. Strangely enough, the list had the date April 23 2007.
Professional lawyers organisations asked who had approved those nine names and what criteria had been followed. The ministry kept silent, fuelling suspicion about the process.
The picture became clearer on May 10 when the Government approved Ganev, Guneva and Sapoundjieva as Bulgarias three nominees for the ECHR. Again no information was given about the selection procedure.
From the moment Ganev appeared on the list, his nomination was seen as questionable, for the simple fact that in his capacity of the then deputy justice minister Ganev could have influenced the selection process. His staff took part in the seven-member group that made the selection, it emerged later. In effect, Ganevs nomination was reviewed by his staff, something that in any country would be unlikely to be described as an objective and transparent process.
As for the other two nominations, Guneva and Sapoundjieva, it became clear that they were there simply to support Ganevs way to ECHR, since there could be only one winner.
All theses concerns raised by the media at the time and NGOs drew no response from the ministry.
On September 4, Ganev did resign, following Petkanov. The new Justice Minister Tacheva said that she believed that Ganev wanted to have time to prepare for the PACE exam scheduled for September 18. Tachevas view on the selection procedure done by her predecessor, was the first comment from a senior Government official.
On September 4, Tacheva said that she was aware of the comments made by various NGOs about the lack of the transparency of the contest, but she held that from a formal point of view there was no problem because the Council of Europe provided no special regulations.
Each EU member country had complete freedom to organise its own selection procedure following its own rules, Tacheva said. However, she did not say what the rules actually were.
The PACE rejection of the three candidates gave all the answers. Looking at the CVs of the three candidates, it seems most likely that the way the selection procedure was done led to the rejection.
On paper, the three nominees meet the criteria of being respected public figures.
Ganev has a PhD in international law and speaks fluent French and Russian. Sapoundjieva is a lawyer, a former judge in Razgrad and Sofia regional courts and speaks French and Russian. As for Guneva, she is the dean of the law faculty of Bourgas Free University, and has worked as a prosecutor in Sofia. At the time of the contest she worked for the Presidency as a member of the committee on pardons.
However, it is not unheard of for claims made on CVs to not be fully borne out in reality.
On September 3 Tacheva told Parliament: I know that our candidates were not approved because of their insufficient command of foreign languages and inadequate professional training in law, and this is a disgrace for Bulgaria.
So in effect the non-transparent procedure ruined the chances of Ganev and the other two candidates to win a place on the ECHR.
As for the next candidates that Bulgaria will have to send on December 17 to Strasbourg to face PACE, Tacheva raised some hope that this time around, there will be transparency.
I expect the NGOs to present clear public procedures for the selection of new candidates for the office of judge in the EHRC, she said.
The new candidates will be named by a commission which will interview them instead of just reading their CVs and other documents.
Moreover Tacheva suggested that candidates should be examined by Parliament as well, as MPs had to adopt special legislation to set out rules for the nomination of Bulgarian judges to European courts.
