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The experience of countries with totalitarian pasts is key to the successful integration of countries in Europe

Vice President Margarita Popova delivered a lecture at the Academy of European Law conference

Challenges to integration among the EU countries with totalitarian pasts and the necessary effort to implement the principles of the European community of freedom, security and justice were outlined by Vice President Margarita Popova at an Academy of European Law conference held at the Court of Cassation of France in Paris.

The main emphasis in the Vice President’s lecture was on the challenges facing the integration of EU member states that have totalitarian pasts.

According to her, the dynamics of cross-border crime requires effective integration in the future and the application of the principle ne bis in idem (the double jeopardy principle) in favour of this process. We need to give impetus to integration, to a stronger Europe in the future, the Vice President told participants in the conference.

Vice President Popova said that the only penal system that could be successfully integrated was a legitimate one, based on the rule of law and administered by an independent and authoritative judiciary which has public confidence. Integration requires deeper comprehension and understanding of past undemocratic countries of Central and Eastern Europe, she said. Knowing the totalitarian past of these countries is a source of no less valuable experience than that of mature democracies, and it is essential for a successful integration process in Europe, the Vice President said.

“The justice systems in post-totalitarian states are under permanent, but not necessarily justified suspicion that they may generate risks to stability and be a legal way to give priority to the forces of crime,” the Vice President said. According to her, distrust of the justice systems in these countries is partly the result of incomplete harmonisation. The democratisation of post-totalitarian systems is not so much a matter of formal harmonisation of legal standards as the duration of their practice. Short deadlines for harmonisation of the courts is one of the main challenges facing the judicial systems of post-totalitarian countries, including Bulgaria, the Vice President said.

Later today, Margarita Popova will meet with Bulgarian students in the French capital.