Bulgarian Prosecutors 'Increasingly under Pressure from Leadership' - Study

Prosecutors in Bulgaria are more often subjected to pressure from their institution's top officials, a recent study argues.

Separately, more than half of interviewed prosecutors say the EU Commission mechanism monitoring Bulgaria's judicial system should be suspended, according to a Gallup Metrics survey conducted among 600 magistrates between May and June, ordered by the Bulgarian Institute for Legal Initiatives (BILI) and cited by Dnevnik.bg.

The latter result is a change in prosecutors' attitudes as a majority backed the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) in 2014.

"[The results are] owed to the leadership's position on the mechanism," Radostina Angelova, Gallup Metrics, is quoted as saying. She adds the atmosphere within the prosecuting authority was "much more cooperative" in two years earlier.

In the spring, Bulgaria's Chief Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov called for the CVM to be revoked as it did not contribute sufficiently to the judicial reform process, a proposal that was rebuffed by EU officials.

The survey comes after an independent analysis of Bulgaria's prosecuting authorities, done by experts from EU member states in line with commission recommendations, was launched last week.

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