The Legal Affairs Committee is conducting a hearing of the candidates for members of the Supreme Judicial Council of the National Assembly quota at an open sitting held in the Parliamentary Chamber The sitting was open by the Committee’s chair Iskra Fidosova. The hearing is broadcast live on BNT-2 and on the Internet site of the National Assembly at:parliament.bg/en/vss_video.

The problems related to the magistrates’ workload, the improvement of the disciplinary measures, the transparency of the SJC work and the judiciary, as well as how to improve the rules for evaluation of magistrates are among the matters to be answered by the candidates for members of the SJC.

Before the start of the hearing the attendants honored with a minute of silence all victims of terrorist attacks. The occasion is the anniversary of the terror attack in the United States.” The brutal encroachment on democracy through terror represents a challenge for the world and for Bulgaria.  We denounce all acts of terrorism as unjustified”, noticed the chair of the Legal Affairs Committee, Iskra Fidosova.

The sitting is attended by the Minister of Justice Diana Kovacheva, the Prosecutor General Boris Velchev, the Chairpersons of the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court Lazar Gruev and Georgi Kolev, the President of the Constitutional Court Evgeni Tanchev,by Anelia Mingova as representative of the Supreme Judicial Council, the Chief Inspector of the Inspectorate of the SJC Ana Karaivanova and the Ombudsman of the Republic of Bulgaria Konstantin Penchev. The sitting is attended also by Ambassadors of the EU member-states and the US Ambassador, by representatives from the Representation Office of the European Commission to Bulgaria and the EC Permanent Representative in charge of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism Yuri Tavernier, as well as by representatives of non-governmental organizations.

There are 17 nominations for members of the SJC on the paraliamentary quota submitted to the committee. The Legal Affairs Committee has held an admissibility check of the documents of all candidates and has admitted to the hearing all of them.

The Legal Affairs Committee is to draw a report on the results of the hearing in a term of 3 days. The report is to be put to vote in a separate meeting of the Committee and officially filed in the registrar's office of the National Assembly until September 14th 2012. The candidates of the National Assembly quota will be put to vote in the Chamber on September 26th 2012.