Bulgaria lengthens list of people subject to checks for links to communist-era State Security
Bulgaria’s National Assembly has approved the second and final reading of amendments to the law on the Dossier Commission, to lengthen the list of people subject to checking for links to the country’s communist-era secret services State Security and the military intelligence division of the Bulgarian People’s Army
The 2006 law empowers the Dossier Commission to investigate the records to establish whether people in various walks of public life worked for Bulgaria’s communist-era secret services, and announce their names.
In its first 10 years, it has disclosed more than 12 000 names. In Bulgaria, lustration is not legal so the only consequence for those announced is that the public knows who they are.
Now subject to checking will be regional mayors, their deputies, secretaries of regional administrations, mayors of smaller settlements, as well as members of court panels, and directors of departments and chief secretaries at statutory regulators including the Communications Regulation Commission, Consumer Protection Commission, Financial Supervision Commission and the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission.
An explanatory memorandum regarding the amendments, tabled by GERB MP Metodi Andreev and Reformist Bloc MPs Petar Slavov and Martin Dimitrov, said that more than 25 years after the beginning of Bulgaria’s transition to democracy, there remained people in senior positions of authority and public officials who remained outside the scope of the Dossier Commission legislation.
The amendments were supported by Dossier Commission head Evtim Kostadinov. In debate, they were opposed by Bulgarian Socialist Party and some nationalist MPs.
Approval of the amendments, on January 25, was one of the final acts of Bulgaria’s 43rd National Assembly before its dissolution to make way for early parliamentary elections to be held on March 26 2017.
(Photo: Christa Richert/ sxc.hu)
/Politics
