Progress of Implementation by June 2015

Pre-defined project 2: “Support to the Supreme Judicial Council related to capacity building and improving the efficiency of the judiciary”

Status of PdP N2: • in progress • started February 2013 • project duration 32 months

Supreme Judicial Council Republic of Bulgaria

Висш съдебен съвет Република България

Progress achieved:

Objective 1: An effective e-summoning system introduced according to the provisions of the Electronic Management Act – in progress

•Study Visit to the CE – implemented in May 2014•Comparative Study on e-summoning in CE Member States and a Framework for legislative amendments –seminar in December 2014•Round Table to present the Comparative study and the Proposals for legislative amendments – 23-24 of February 2015•Analysis of Good Practices and Good Practices Manual for e-summoning – developed – May 2015 •Final proposals for legislative changes in the Civil Procedure Code, Penal Procedure Code and Administrative Procedure Code regarding e-summoning sent to the Ministry of Justice – April 2015 •Launched public procurement procedure for hardware and software for e-summoning – 20 May 2015

Objective 2: The capacity of the members of the Bulgarian judiciary to comply with and implement the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights and its case-law increased and Objective 3: A network of judges specialized in human rights.

•Successful performance of the Bulgarian judges supporting the work of the Registry of the ECtHR – 9 Bulgarian judges •Internal professional network for exchange of information amongst Bulgarian magistrates concerning the functioning and the practice of the European Court of Human Rights (published contact details of the first 3 judges – 2014) •Restricted access forum for magistrates for exchange of information regarding the functioning and the practice of the ECtHR – created - June 2015 •Round table to present the information exchange network – will take place on 7 of July 2015

Progress achieved:

Objective 4: A mechanism for quality assessment of the workload in the judicial system both at the individual level and the institutional level focusing on qualitative indicators and benchmarks developed – in progress

•Study Visit to the CE - October 2013•held 2 joint working groups – one in Bulgaria (16-18 December 2013) and one in the Netherlands (14-15 July 2014) •Empirical study on workload of judges to which have been invited all judges of the regional, district, appellate and administrative courts - finished. Started technical and statistical analysis of the data – march 2015 •Started the work of the focus groups to design criteria for qualitative assessment of the workload of magistrates - June 2015 •Interactive map of the judicial regions in Bulgaria – end of April 2015

Progress achieved: