Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office Becomes Member of IAP

The Executive Committee of the International Association of Prosecutors (IAP) has decided to accept the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Bulgaria as a full member of the organisation. The request for membership was filed by Bulgaria’s Chief Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov on 16 January 2018. Until now, a member of the International Association was only the Association of Prosecutors in Bulgaria as an independent professional organisation.

The International Association of Prosecutors was established in June 1995 in Vienna. The first general meeting of its members was held in September 1996 in Budapest. It is a non-governmental and non-political professional organization that on a voluntary basis brings together prosecutors’s offices and individual members - prosecutors from around the world.

The seat of the General Secretariat is in The Hague. IAP members include Prosecutor's Offices of Canada, China, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Egypt, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Israel, Georgia, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden as well as the professional organisations of prosecutors from Austria, Bulgaria, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Chile, Greece, Kosovo, Portugal, Serbia, Ukraine and others.

The organisation carries out extensive trainings of prosecutors and maintains a significant amount of professional information that its members enjoy.

Within the IAP, the so-called Prosecuting Networks, with contact points in each country focused on counter-terrorism, trafficking in human beings, international criminal justice, anti-corruption and computer crimes. The membership of the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Bulgaria in the International Association of Prosecutors makes it possible for Bulgarian prosecutors to participate in these activities and is important for improving their qualifications as well as for international legal cooperation.