Bulgaria's New Justice Minister Vows to Seek Dialogue with All Parties

Bulgarian Justice Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva on Sunday asserted she will help carry through the judicial reform despite Parliament's decision to reject sections of it earlier in December.

Zaharieva gave an interview for private national bTV station, days after taking over from Hristo Ivanov. The latter resigned in protest against lawmakers' move to vote down some of his judicial reform proposals, namely those which would have allowed Parliament and the Prosecutor's Office to appoint an equal number of prosecutors at the Supreme Judicial Council (VSS), the top decisionmaking body in Bulgaria's judicial system.

His successor dismissed claims by some of the lawmakers from the Reformist Bloc, the junior partner in Bulgaria's coalition government, who maintain that the rejection of some texts caused the judicial reform to fail.

"The change [to the constitution approved this week] is a good step after all. A decisive one and cannot be downplayed. This step is only in the Constitution. Much harder work in the legislation is yet to be done," she added.

The decision of Borisov to appoint Zaharieva left Parliament divided, with 126 (out of 240) MPs voting to back her nomination.

Zaharieva asserted she would never accept to coordinate her actions with Bulgaria's Chief Prosecutor if she were asked to do so.

She has yet to look for Deputy Ministers after all three deputies to Ivanov submitted their resignations hours after her predecessor stepped down.

The successor to Ivanov pointed to some major achievements doing her two terms as interim Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria (in the two caretaker governments in the spring of 2013 and the autumn of 2014 respectively), recalling that she had sped up administrative...