Nine Bulgarian MEPs have objected to a plan to abolish the Dossier Commission and hand its functions to the State Agency "Archives". In a joint official statement, they say they want the bill withdrawn.
The statement is signed by Andrey Kovatchev, Andrey Novakov, Eva Maydell, Emil Radev, Ivaylo Valchev, Iliya Lazarov, Nikola Minchev, Radan Kanev and Hristo Petrov.
A draft amendment to the law on access to and disclosure of documents and on identifying Bulgarian citizens' links to State Security and the intelligence services of the Bulgarian People's Army has been put out for public consultation. The ruling parties proposed it. It creates a new Central Expert Commission. Who sits on it, what it does and what rules it follows will be set by administrative decision. The ruling parties say the change is an administrative reform that will streamline the system and save money.
The MEPs call the decision shocking. They say it raises doubts about the ideological direction of a government that acts on the principle that whoever controls the story of the past controls the future. The statement refers to "the current government, which has no qualms about surrounding itself with generals, officers and agents of State Security and their families".
The signatories find the arguments about reform, streamlining and savings odd. They say savings alone do not justify closing the institution. "We cannot measure the price of the truth about the totalitarian regime in budget lines," they write. If the aim is only to streamline, they say, the government must explain why that calls for a change on such a scale.
At present, parliament elects the Commission, no party holds a majority on it, and it answers only to parliament. The MEPs say moving to the State Agency "Archives" would end this independence. They are especially worried by the new Central Expert Commission: there are no clear limits on who can take part in it, and no protection against ties to the former repressive bodies or to today's security services. They want the guarantee of independence, when people are named as linked to the totalitarian services, written into law rather than left to administrative decisions.
They support more efficient work, digitisation and better access to the documents. But they say closing an institution that works requires convincing evidence. The Commission has built up serious archive and expert capacity and a working system for storing and releasing documents, the MEPs say. The documents show how the repressive apparatus operated, who stood behind the persecution of thousands of people, and what part was played by people who later came to power. The Commission does not write history to order but publishes facts backed by archive evidence, and that is part of citizens' right to know the truth, they write.
They describe the bill as inexpedient, unargued and unfounded. The signatories say opening the archives is part of the democratic transition and of Europe's commitment to remember the victims, and that the European Parliament has repeatedly stressed the importance of the archives of totalitarian regimes. The EU is also a community of values such as democracy, human dignity, the rule of law and historical memory, they remind readers. Reconciliation and democracy are built on truth, memory and transparency, not on forgetting, and the truth about communism is not a party issue but a democratic one, they say.
The law on the dossiers was passed in 2006, and the Commission was set up on the recommendations of European institutions before Bulgaria joined the EU. The main recommendation then, as now, was that the body should be as independent as possible. The same recommendations on the archives of totalitarian services are made today to EU candidate countries, above all on UDBA and KOS, which acted against Bulgarian interests in the former Yugoslavia.
The MEPs say that in 2006 the ruling parties of the day did not expect the law to take effect. They pay tribute to the Commission's staff and to its then chairman Evtim Kostadinov.