Chair of the Internal Security and Public Order Committee Tsvetan Tsvetanov opened a round table on “The Committee for Disclosing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens with the State Security Service and the Intelligence Services: present and future”, organised with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Regrettably, 25 years later, we are still talking about affiliation to the services, said the Chair of the Internal Security and Public Order Committee. When we launched the democratic changes in Bulgaria, we just wanted to follow the standards and the model implemented by our German friends, added Tsvetan Tsvetanov. Throughout the years, we have heard many messages, but seen few real actions for delivering the files, which brings up the question of whether some of them have been deleted, he said. In 2010, over 1 million units of information from the archives of the Interior Ministry were delivered to the Committee for Disclosing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens with the State Security Service and the Intelligence Services, Tsvetan Tsvetanov recalled.

This debate is very much needed, said former Interior Minister Prof. Veselin Vuchkov. He recalled that the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg had found that the Committee and its work were significant for the society.

At the round table, Evtim Kostadinov, Chair of the Committee for Disclosing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens with the State Security Service and the Intelligence Services, presented a detailed report on the Committee’s work. Until 2017, the Committee has checked 287,780 persons; the largest number of cases were studied in 2008 and 2016. According to the report, 15,192 persons collaborated with the services, 12,404 of whom were publicly announced. Out of a total of 384 cases, 286 have been closed in favor of the Committee, and only 41 decisions have been repealed, added the Committee Chair.

Head of the KAS Office in Bulgaria Thorsten Geissler explained to the participants in the round table how the consequences of GDR’s communist state security service had been dealt with after the changes. One of the important goals was to prevent access of former STASI agents to public office. Since 1990, over 3 million citizens have asked for access to their personal files in the archives, he also said.