The Bulgarian Minister of Justice, Margarita Popova, has announced that the ministry is working on a concept, which will filter appeals before going to the Strasbourg Court.

“The first thing that we need to do in the judicial reform is to create a work group and decide how we could make an internal, national mechanism, in order to be able to filter the appeals that go to the Strasbourg Human Rights Court. We need to do this in order for Bulgarians to be able to find satisfaction and compensations first here in Bulgaria,” Popova said Friday in an interview for the Bulgarian National Radio BNR.

She also explained that this concept has been created by some Bulgarian NGOs and that it will require changes in the legislation and creation of a structure that will take care of compensations for people whose cases have been in court for too long.

Popova has also stated that the schedule for the reforms in the judicial system, connected to the adoption of bills in the Council of Ministers, is ready.

“We are consulting with the colleagues from the Parliament how to make the procedure faster for bills which need to be adopted,” she said.

The minister has also stated that the Ministry of Justice is preparing the required by the European Commission new Penal Code, as well as the law on deprivation of property, acquired illegally, and the law on conflict of interests.

According to Popova, the suggestions by the Supreme Judicial Council (VSS) for changes in the law for the judiciary do not correspond to the demands of magistrates in the country, presented two weeks ago.

“The magistrates submitted reports and we discussed every single suggestion made by the work group in the Ministry of Justice. We agreed with many of them and partly accepted some of them. We will not accept the rest because they do not fit in the philosophy and our concept for stabilization of the judicial system,” Popova said, adding that there are many magistrates and the ministry cannot fulfill the wishes of all of them.

She has also stated that in order to have good results, the ministry needs to work peacefully with all the magistrates, trust them and be professional about their work commitments.

“The magistrates should not worry that we are interfering with their work. However, on the other hand, the society needs to be satisfied by the work of all public authorities,” she said.