MEPs from Democracy, Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights Monitoring Group’ in the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties held an in camera meeting on Friday 28 August to discuss the situation in Bulgaria, where numerous protests have shaken the government in recent weeks over several scandals linked to suspicions of corruption surrounding Prime Minister Boyko Borisov’s GERB party. The meeting, led by Sophie in 't Veld (Renew Europe, the Netherlands) who heads the Group, aimed to discuss the situation with experts from the Council of Europe (Venice Commission, GRECO), Bulgarian politicians and members of the Bulgarian judiciary. Contacted by EUROPE, Ms in ’t Veld did not wish to divulge the confidential content of these exchanges, but indicated that “questions will be sent again” to the actors concerned to fully understand the situation, as the length of the meeting “did not allow for all the answers”.
The Dutch liberal does not want to rush the action of the monitoring group and believes that the answers to the questions sent will in any case “feed into the Commission’s first annual report on the rule of law”. This will be presented in September and will concern all Member States.
Ms in ’t Veld hopes that this report will live up to the expectations of Parliament, which had called, as early as 2016, for a new mechanism for analysing the rule of law in the EU that merges all existing tools and also relies on external sources of information. The Commission seemed to give priority first and foremost to elements provided by governments.
For Bulgaria, the monitoring group will decide in the meantime on the follow-up to be given to this very first hearing on these events. (SP)