Convictions against the Bulgarian state by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the value of recoveries paid by the Bulgarian state continued to increase, Dnevnik daily said.

Compensations paid for 2007 alone, amounted to nearly 200 000 euro, breaking all records. In comparison, for the entire 1992-2005 period Bulgarians received 500 000 euro in compensations.

The rapid increase of recoveries began in 2006 when the state paid 153 000 euro for violations the rights of citizens and legal entities. Statistics shows that since September 1992 when Bulgaria ratified the European Convention on Human Rights, it has paid nearly 750 000 euro for violating it.

The increased number of convictions of the Bulgarian state by the Strasbourg Court could be explained because of several important developments that took place, Dnevnik daily said quoting Mihail Ekimdjiev, one of the lawyers who won most cases in the European Court. According to him over the past 15 years Bulgarian citizens became familiar with the opportunities presented by the Court and lawyers too got to know the subject matter better. The attitude of institutions also changed considerably, Ekimdjiev said. He thought people looked at Europe for justice because they did not find it in Bulgaria.

Most of the convictions of the Bulgarian state were for the judiciary operating too slow, bad prison conditions and police violence, Dnevnik daily said. According to Ekimdjiev the European Court of Human Rights was the only line of defence against bad laws since Bulgarian citizens did not have the right to approach Bulgaria's Constitutional Court – the only institution authorised to abolish laws. However, if Bulgarian law contradicted the European Convention on Human Rights, citizens could turn to the court in Strasbourg.

According to Dnevnik, unofficial sources revealed that Bulgarian citizens filed over 5000 complaints to the Court. 2000 of them have already been dealt with, this number included rejected complaints. Therefore currently there were 3000 pending complaints. Over 90 per cent of them would be rejected. Strasbourg justice, however, is quite slow. The last convictions of Bulgaria concerned complaints from 2000 and 2001, while there are even complaints remaining from 1999.

The slow process of getting to a verdict and a desire to cut down on procedure expenditures made the Court encourage so-called friendly agreements between plaintiffs and states. With a friendly agreement the state would acknowledge that some of its bodies violated a citizen's rights and, to avoid conviction, would agree to compensate them. These agreements were profitable for plaintiffs as well since they would avoid the long wait. In 2007 Bulgaria paid 48 000 euro to these agreements.