A panel of Bulgarian judges is to put forth nominations for two new members of the country's Supreme Judicial Council (VSS) on July 11.

The session will not be attended by magistrates from Sofia, Blagoevgrad and the Supreme Court of Cassation (VKS), who boycotted the procedure by failing to nominate delegates.

Tuesday's session is to shed light on the names of the candidates for replacing Kapka Kostova and Galina Zaharova, who resigned in protest against the controversial staff policy of the incumbent VSS.

The resignations were triggered by the appointment of Vladimira Yaneva, a close friend of Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov, as Chair of the Sofia City Court, despite her scant four years of experience as a judge.

Bulgarian Mass-circulation daily Trud cited Monday Marina Mihaylova and Galya Hristova from the Supreme Administrative Court (VAS) and Teodora Ninova and Ivan Nedev from the Supreme Court of Cassation (VKS) as the most likely contestants for the two vacancies.

The nominations will be put to a vote in two months' time, on September 12.

According to Bulgaria's Judiciary Act, new VSS members can be elected with a simple majority (50%+1), regardless of the number of attending delegates. If no candidate receives the support of a simple majority, the one with the highest number of votes wins.

The boycott of magistrates from the southern Bulgarian city of Blagoevgrad and from the biggest courts in Sofia leaves a question mark over the legitimacy of the election process, with Bulgarian law requiring every 10 judges to appoint a delegate to the assembly.

Senior legal experts in the country have expressed their concern that the new VSS members may be elected by a panel that is not truly representative of the judges' guild in Bulgaria.

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