Supreme Judicial Council

REPUBLIC OF BULGARIA

SUPREME JUDICIAL COUNCIL

INFORMATION

about Bulgaria’s progress under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism as regards the recommendations set in the EC Report of 18 July 2012 to the SJC and the judicial authorities for the period July 2012 – September 2013

І. REFORM OF THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM

RENEW THE SJC WITH A MANDATE TO UNDERTAKE FUNDAMENTAL REFORM

The new SJC, elected in accordance with new legislative rules following amendments to the Judicial System Act, began its term of office on 3 October 2012. All elected SJC members had, via their concept papers elaborated and presented before the election, expressed commitment to anactive role of the Council..

Changes in the SJC organisation and structure were implemented by the end of October 2012 aiming to outline and demonstrate the priorities in the Council’s future work: new Regulations for the organisation of the activities of the SJC and its administration; annual program by the end of 2013 which is an action plan for the first year of its term of office; changes in the structure of the standing commissions.

The SJC adopted the following as goals of primary importance:

-Overcome the uneven workload of judicial authorities;

-Prepare for the establishmentof a mechanism for objective measurement of the magistrates’ workload;

-Improve and speed up the work in relation to conducting competitions for the appointment of magistrates;

-Improve the appraisal criteria and indicators and speed up the process of appraisal of magistrates;

-Update the measures for prevention of corruption and conflicts of interests in judicial authorities, including improvement of accountability, of the mechanisms of random allocation of cases and case files in the judicial authorities; the role of the magistrates’ ethical conduct in their career development, etc.;

-Improve the SJC’s disciplinary practice;

-Work on policies on strengthening the publicity and transparency in the SJC’s work and the effective interaction with magistrates’ professional organisations and NGOs working to support the judicial reform.

In the medium term, on the basis of goal attainment, the SJC has set two major goals for itself:

-Establish and implement a complete medium-term human resource strategy;

-Reorganise the judicial authorities – modifying the judicial map, including changes in the structure of the judicial authorities.

MEDIUM-TERM HUMAN RESOURCE STRATEGY FOR THE JUDICIARY

The SJC undertookthe filling of the numerous vacancies for magistrates (more than 500) in a way which complies with the principle of competitions for career development and, at the same time, helps to reduce the overload in some judicial authorities.From January to June 2013 more than 10 analyses were prepared showing the possibilities to move vacant positions from authorities which are not overloaded to authorities which are, and fill in the positions via competitions.

The planning for the junior judges had been completed as early as January 2013 even before the announcement of the competition for junior judges and prosecutors; moreover, the competition was not announced for all vacant positions but for less in view of the proposals of administrative heads, the workload of the respective authority, and the financial limits of the judicial budget, or of the 50 vacant positions for junior judges 24 were announced as open in a competition and of the 48 vacant positions for junior prosecutors 16 were announced as open in a competition.

By its decision from 31 January 2013 the SJC approved a timetable for the announcement of competitions; this timetable was followed with minimum deviation and, as of 31 October 2013, all vacant positions for judges, prosecutors and investigators in all instances in courts and prosecutor’s offices were announced open via competitions. By several SJC decisions in 2013, 141 vacant positions in the judiciary in courts, prosecutor’s offices and investigation services which were not overloaded were cancelled and, respectively, 88 new positions for judges were opened in overloaded courts and courts with medium workload and 53 in overloaded prosecutor’s offices.

A transfer procedure was also held under Article194 JSA to alleviate the workload of the busiest administrative courts – Sofia City AdmC, Burgas AdmC and Plovdiv AdmC.In view of the opening of 10 new positions for judges in Sofia Regional Court (Sofia RC), together with the remaining vacant positions – a total of 25 vacancies in the Sofia RC, the appointment of 10 junior judges in September 2013 as regional judges and the upcoming appointment of another 2 judges, the problem with the excessive workload in this court would be in the process of resolving.

An Analysis of the court administration by appellate court areasand optimisation of the staff positions in courts wasperformed. As a result of this, by an SJC decision, the number of positions was expanded by 117 court staff in the judicial authorities with the greatest workload; for this purpose, 74 vacant positions for court staff in authorities with less workload were cancelled and 24 positions takenby court staff were made redundant. As part of the resolution of the problem of the excessive workload of Sofia Regional Court, 22 new positions for court staff were opened, 10 of which for judicial assistants. The possibility to appoint judicial assistants was given at the regional level for the first time.

These ongoing measures to regulate the workload, based on the existing data about the number of cases initiated and case files as per the number of magistrates and by optimising the positions for court staff in view of their ratio to magistrates, have achieved a fairer allocation of the workload at present which, in combination with the gradual opening of the competitions for vacancies – first at the supreme level together with the regional levels, followed the appellate, specialised criminal courts and prosecutor’s offices, and district levels – attained the result targeted at the end of 2013 to meet the needs of individual authorities in view of their workload.

A total of 35 competitions for the positions of magistrates at all levels via initial appointment, transfer and promotion were opened by the end of October 2013 for a total of 335 positions.

A reduction in the magistrates’ workload in the busiest bodieshas been achieved. For example, after all newly appointed people have taken their positions, the workload per one judge in Sofia Regional Courthas fallen from 102.55 cases heard per month to 88.54 cases, respectively from 63.17 completed cases to 54.54 completed cases. In Varna Regional Court, the decrease is from 81.52 cases to 66.54 cases per magistrate a month; in Sofia City Court, the decrease is from 38.72 cases to 36.10 cases. The same processes are going in the prosecutor’s offices with excessive workload.

The SJC has also elaborated transparent rules under Article194 JSA for the transfer of tenured magistrates from one authority to another when the number of position in authorities is reduced or when positions are cancelled as well as Rules for the secondment of judges. The latter have been discussed by the Civil Council with the SJC and elaborated on the basis of the proposals submitted by them. The rules aim to limit the circumvention of the legislative mechanisms of magistrates’ career development and introduce positive practices to second judges only when a judicial authority finds it hard to perform its functions if a magistrate is absent.As the JSA provides that secondment is within the exclusive powers of administrative heads, the SJC cannot declare them mandatory but it is important for the Council to set standards which the administrative heads are to observe knowing that any deviation from them would result in mass disapproval and doubts about ill intentions. Transparent secondment is also assisted by the created and already working Register of seconded magistrates which is accessible via the SJC website. The Register includes all secondments, periods and grounds of an administrative head to second a specific magistrate. A second part of the Register is to be set up which will include the position to which a magistrate needs to be seconded.

The implementation of the recommendation to establishand implement a human resource strategy in the judiciary involves SJC standing commissions – the Nominations and Appraisal Commission(NAC) and the Workload Commission. The working group set upwith the Workload Commission also includes magistrates and external experts and representatives of magistrates’ professional organisations and NGOs. In view of the specificity of the task assigned which requires a performanceperiod which is longer than the one-year implementation horizon, the Commissions are working in the order they have adopted and following the deadlines set. In brief, the details of the task completed by of 31 October 2013 are as follows:

- Analyses prepared of the statistical data about the workload for the past 5 years of all judicial authorities;

- Analyses prepared about the availability of personnel in all authorities, separately for the magistratesand the administration;

- Methodology adopted to measure the workload of each magistrate and each judicial authority by weighing the time for completion of each case and case file. The methodology contains the criteria for grouping cases and case files, the manner in which the empirical study is carried out, the summary of the results and the preparation of the final conclusions;

- Samples of survey tools prepared and given to individual courts for test filling out.

In addition, the prosecutors’ subgroup in the Commission is ready with models developed for the evaluation of the workload of prosecutors and investigators by time weighing of each action on prosecutor’s cases and cases files in view of the specificity of the actions which are quite diverse.

The study of case weight should be based on the time judges and prosecutors spend on hearing and resolving case files and cases. To collect the empirical data needed, the working group decided to conduct a study to determine the weight of individual cases based on a methodology prepared and adopted by the SJC. The preparation of the study involved judges from the working group and experts in empirical analyses, a methodologist sociologist and a statistician. The preparation includes the development of survey tools for the individual types of cases and the exhaustive determination of the groups of cases which will be the subject of study; analysis and comparison of the respective statistical data for the groups of cases. As of September 2013, the preparatory stage has been completed and the survey is to be launched.

The study results will be used for a justified response to the question how many judges (respectively prosecutors) are needed to provide effective case resolution in a given jurisdiction or in the system as a whole. The objective time measurement of the workload will be the leading criterion in reforming the borders of court areas. The determination of the weight of individual types of cases can also be used for internal management decisions in every court or prosecutor’s office, as a means to ensure even workload.

According to estimates, the test filling outs should be completed by the end of the year, the survey questionnaires are to be approved and, in the beginning of 2014, within three months, they are to be filled out by all respondents while the creation of the workload norm will be done by September.

The preparation of the workload norm is the key to completing the work on the medium-term strategy because it is the main criterion to estimatethe need for human resources, their allocation, respectively training, and providing the respective material working conditions.

A working group has been set up to analyse the level of workload in military courts and military prosecutor’s offices with a view to optimising their structure and work. In October 2013, the SJC assigned to the Workload Commission to prepare a draft decision proposing how many and which military judicial authorities should be closed down, how the magistrates released from these authorities should be allocated, how to reallocate jurisdiction among the remaining authorities. After the SJC adopts the draft and takes a decision (which is scheduled for 13 November 2013), there should be a statutoryconsultationwith the Ministry of Defence. The deadline for real closing down set by the SJC is the first quarter of 2014.

GUARANTEES FOR THE INVOLVEMENT OF ALL SIGNIFICANT NGOsAND PROFESSIONAL ORGANISATIONS IN DEFINING AND MONITORING STRATEGIES FOR REFORM

To guarantee the broad involvement of NGOs and magistrates’ professional organisations in defining and monitoring strategies for reform, a Civil Council has been set up with the SJC which has been operational since January 2013.At present, a total of 17 organisations are taking part in the Civil Council which held a total of 7 meetings by the end of October 2013. The Council’s agenda and decisionsare published on the SJC website ina specialsection. All internal SJC acts which are the basis forreforms are discussed in the Civil Council before their adoption.The Civil Council’s format is open: any organisations whose subject matter involves judicial issues and have expressed interest in it, may join.

The acts to strengthen the publicity and transparency in the SJC’s work should also be indicated as a part of the SJC’s work on the judicial reform, including:

-A Communication Strategy of the SJC adopted and in implementation;

-Adding new features to the SJC website such as access to the agenda and minutes of meetings of standing commissions, individual sections with information about the election procedures for administrative heads, the Civil Council, the new contact form for magistrates from November 2012, registers of disciplinary proceedings, seconded magistrates, reports of the Inspectorate to the SJC, etc;

-Annual inspections introduced by the SJC over the courts’ compliance with the statutory requirement for immediate and complete publishing of judgments and sentences on the courts’ websites;

-Work to unify the websites of judicial authorities has begun.

An electronic register of citizens’ complaints and signals submitted to the SJC was introduced in January 2012 allowing complainants to track their progresselectronically via the SJC website.The Professional Qualification, Information Technologies and Statistics Commission took a decision about the introduction of a mechanism to use the electronic register of citizens’ complaints and signals – the information system to receive and process complains and signals of corruption created under an Operational Programme Administrative Capacity project. The system will register user names and passwords for the administrative heads of all courts and additional customisation will be made as needed. This allows the respective administrative head to be informed about the complaints and signals received electronically.

ІІ. INDEPENDENCE, ACCOUNTABILITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE JUDICIARY

FOCUS THE WORK OF THE INSPECTORATE ON INTEGRITY AND JUDICIAL EFFICIENCY. DEFINE A SINGLE, EFFECTIVE SYSTEM OF RANDOM ALLOCATION OF CASES FOR USE NATIONWIDE

The SJC has prepared an analysis of the summarised results about the ISJC findings regarding the random allocation of cases during the thematic and planned inspections carried out in the Plovdiv appellate court areafor the period 1 January 2012 – 1 November 2012 (publicly available on the SJC website). Based on this Analysis, by its decision of 8 November 2012, the SJC recommended to the administrative heads of judicial authorities to perform inspections of the observance of the principle of random allocation of casesevery six months and, in this way, the SJC periodically receives information from judicial authorities about the results and the action taken to improve the organisation of this process.

In pursuance ofthe Action Plan of Urgent Measures and Actions of the Government and the Judicial Authorities to Implement the Benchmarks for Judicial ReformProgress, the Fight against Corruption and Organised Crime for the Period July 2012 – December 2013, inspections of the observance of the principle of random allocation under Article9 JSA were carried out in the Supreme Administrative Court, the Supreme Court of Cassation and Sofia City Court. The reports about the inspections prepared by the two SJC commissions – Commission for Prevention and Detection of Conflicts of Interests and Interaction with the ISJC and Professional Qualification, Information Technologies and Statistics Commission– and the reports of the BILI Foundation and NGO Centre Association, Razgrad, were presented to the SJC and adopted by a decision of 26 July 2013. By the same decision, the SJC adopted as a strategic goal the creation and use of a unified and centralised electronic system of random allocation of case files and cases and a working group was set up tasked to discuss the technical, financial and other administrative and organisational problems in courts in strict compliance with the requirement for complete storage of information under Article9 in the existing software products and to propose options to improve them to ensure maximum unification, protectability and security until the unified software is introduced.

By an SJC decision of 31 October 2013, Technical Requirements for the Random Allocation of CasesSoftware were approved which will also be at the core of the requirements for the future unified centralised product which will be installed in the SJC server. The product will be created with the assistance of funding under OP Administrative Capacity; the SJC project has already been approved by the Managing Authority of the OP Administrative Capacityand a contract with an implementation period of 20 months is to be signed. However, on 31 October 2013, the SJC decided that, until the introduction of the unified product, the courts should use the specialised product LawChoice and the random allocation module in the case management system CMS; the existing product Law Choice should be further developed by 15 November 2013 to ensure maximum compliance with the approved Technical Requirements for the Random Allocation of CasesSoftware and the new version should document the random assignment of a judge rapporteur on the SJC website. The same decision of 31 October 2013 instructs that options should be sought to document the assignment in judicial authorities which do not use Law Choice on the SJC website as well. It was also decided to seek an opinion on the developments in Law Choice and CMS from an IT expert with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences or another government institution regarding the security level achieved and the compliance with the above decisions for further development of the products CMS and Law Choice; in view of the opinion, the SJC will take a decision about which product(s) should be used in the courts until the introduction of a unified centralised software for random allocationof cases.The draft rules and methodological guidance on the random allocation of cases and case files in courts (excluding the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court) have been submitted to the magistrates and the Civil Council for their opinions by 5 November 2013. In addition, the same deadline, 5 November 2013, has been set for the Presidents of the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court and the General Prosecutor to prepare draft rules for the random allocation of cases and case files which they should put forward to the SJC for approval. This series of actions and decisions aims to achieve, in an intermediary period, until the development and introduction of the new unified software for random allocation, maximum streamlining, protection and security of the products for random allocation of cases and cases files used currently and maximum storage of the random allocation information on the one hand, and, on the other – to achieve maximum unified rules and methodological guidance for work with the two software products approved as described above.