Bulgaria’s Chief Prosecutor Met with the Federal Prosecutor of Belgium

Bulgaria’s Chief Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov was in Brussels on 18^th of May at the invitation of the Federal Prosecutor of Belgium. The two discussed the fight against terrorism and reforming the structure of the prosecutor's office.

Tsatsarov had meetings in the European Commission where he discussed the cooperation and verification mechanism in the area of justice and home affairs.

Speaking to a BNT reporter after the meetings, Tsatsarov said that he heard very good words, which were an appreciation of the work of the Bulgarian prosecutors and added he felt very proud. He said he heard an exceptionally good assessment and at the same time heard everything that had to be done in order to make it possible for the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM), to come to an end.

In this sense, he noted, it was absolutely unrealistic to think, to ask for the termination of the mechanism just like that, as a matter of its course. "This is not going to happen," he said. "The only possibility for the mechanism to stop its action in respect of Romania and Bulgaria should be a result of our own efforts. Of all the meetings I have had here, I can say one thing - the objectivity of the people who would be assessing our efforts is guaranteed,"Tsatsarov said.

To the BNT question about the willingness of Jean-Claude Juncker to bring the CVM to an end during his tenure, Tsatsarov commented that Juncker’s words should be paraphrased as "help us, but help yourself, the only way to evaluate you objectively is for you to make progress."

“We cannot expect the mechanism to be phased out as an expression of a gift or a general political decision by the Commission. Let us be realistic about the situation in Bulgaria. We have the opportunity to make a very good progress, if we continue in the direction in which we have gone - amending the Criminal Code, amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code and the anticorruption law. These are steps that we are fully capable of doing as a state and as a legal system,” he said.