All children – victims of violence should be interrogated in special rooms and not in police and court premises. The Blue Room is a special place, separated by Venetian glass. The interior in one part of the room is suitable for a child and the judge, prosecutor, the defendant and his lawyer sit in the other part. The video tape recorded is recognized as evidence in the trial. These are the requirements of European Directive 2012/29.

“A total of 14 blue rooms are now ready and used in Bulgaria by the court, prosecution, the police investigative bodies and social workers,” says Deputy Minister of Justice Verginia Micheva. “I must confess though that those rooms are not fully used. We would like that to happen more often and that is why we find it essential to turn the respective legal text into something mandatory.”

Deputy Minister Micheva has taken the transposition of the directive and the creation of a Child Justice Act really personally. “The penal procedure code’s current amendments shall envisage the construction of such Blue Rooms,” she says, recalling how as a first instance judge she questioned a 12-year-old child that had been abused at the age of 3. “Can you imagine what the kid had gone through to reach my court room!” There are 14 Blue Rooms now ready in Bulgaria. Other 5 will be ready within a month, thanks to the Bulgarian-Swiss Cooperation Programme, implemented with the Ministry of Justice. The idea is their number to grow to at least 28, following the number of bigger court districts. Their construction will be covered by the Ministry of Justice.

“I would like to add that Directive 2012/29 relates to both minor crime victims and also when the latter have already turned 18,” Mrs. Micheva says. “The implementation of the so-called recovery justice is mandatory according to the directive, along with the transposition of many rights of the victims – such as the one of special court architecture, restricting the meeting of the victim and the offender. Recovery justice is a new element for our penal procedure. Mediation is also essential for the procedure and it will be envisaged in the Criminal Code amendments, but we will have to train mediators. The Bulgarian-Swiss Cooperation Programme will help us with that this year.”

Directive 2012/29 entered into force on 16 November 2015, but the parliament still hasn’t adopted the respective legislative changes.

“This directive seemed to me as an easy one for transposition in the beginning,” Mrs. Micheva goes on to say. “We have been working on it for 4 months and I hope that we will have finalized the texts by mid-February. The challenge is big, as a new term is introduced – a victim of crime, which is wider in range than the currently used term injured. This leads to confusion and difficulty for the synchronization of the penal procedure texts with the directive’s requirements.”

Deputy Minister Micheva and her team are working hard on a Child Justice Draft Bill. It envisages the implementation of methods for recovery justice as an alternative to penalties for children who have broken the law. This type of justice aims at the recovering of the well-being of the victims, the doers and the communities they come from, at the same time preventing further damages.

“I expect the draft bill’s texts to be finalized by the end of this month and then we will present it for a wider public debate, since the change is a substantial one,” the deputy minister goes on to say. “It is envisaged not only for the penal procedure for children, but also for the social care, education, the corrective measures and the avoidance of criminal justice. However, what should the alternative measures be? The closure of correctional schools and social educational boarding schools is envisaged, but what shall we replace them with? Very serious work is forthcoming. When our proposal is ready, we will gather representatives of the interested institutions for a discussion which will be followed by a public debate later on,” Deputy Minister of Justice Verginia Micheva says in conclusion.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev