Foreign businesses demand swift judicial reforms in Bulgaria

Eight international business organisations on Thursday urged the Bulgarian government to overhaul its corruption-prone and inefficient judiciary to spur growth and attract investment into the European Union's poorest member state.

The organisations, representing trading partners such as the United States, Canada, France, Austria and Italy urged swift and deep reforms to ensure judges and prosecutors are independent and free from political bias.

"Despite the stable macroeconomic framework here, there are other factors that prevent investors from choosing Bulgaria," said Venislav Iotov, First Vice-President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria.

"One of them is the image of the country as a state which lacks a working judicial system and is a place with serious corruption," he told a news conference.

Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, has been persistently rapped by Brussels for failing to impose strict rule of law and jail high-level officials guilty of corruption.

Bulgaria has for years been ranked as one of the EU's most corrupt members in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, despite different governments pledging to crack down on widespread graft.

That has kept the Balkan country out of the EU's passport free Schengen zone, kept investors away and is seen as a major obstacle to Bulgaria adopting the euro currency.

"We firmly believe the lack of impartial and efficient courts and prosecution is one of the main barriers to economic growth and to attracting foreign investment," the organisations said in an open letter.

The businesses said the reforms undertaken by the previous government of Prime Minister Boyko Borissov were not enough and his new cabinet should step up work to make judges free from political pressure and prosecutors more accountable.

Foreign direct investment has been about 1.3-1.5 billion euros a year since the global financial crisis hit in 2009, a far cry from the 6-7 billion euros seen before the global financial crisis in 2008-09 put an end to a construction and real estate boom.

"If the level of corruption changes and we see supremacy of law, investment will immediately increase," said Alex Nestor with the Canada Bulgarian Business Network.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)