“We are yet to hear news from and about the European Prosecutor’s Office in Bulgaria. The machine has been in motion very seriously for about a year. Like all European institutions – there the machine is activated slowly, but on the other hand it acts uncompromisingly”.
This is what Zinaida Zlatanova, former head of the Representation of the European Commission in Bulgaria and former Minister of Justice, told BNR.
She recalled that the European Public Prosecutor’s Office has been working for less than two years and the first report on its activities is for 2022:
“In March 2023, we had an announcement about another project that made headlines in Bulgaria. It’s about the so-called Largo. If you look at the news on the website of the European Prosecutor’s Office, an investigation has started there. There are also several investigations into VAT abuse in very large dimensions, which are cross-border, in which, unfortunately, Bulgaria also participates… In the report of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office for 2022, out of 865 newly started investigations for the whole EU – 101 are in Bulgaria, which is quite a significant figure considering the size of our country”.
As a former justice minister, she commented that there is good news in changing legislation under the pressure of public discontent, and that is that politicians are hearing what the people want, but “the bad news for those who make the laws is that citizens will not be satisfied only with this, but it must be continued through the institutions to eliminate this phenomenon”.