"We Continue the Change" (PP) has collected enough signatures to force an extraordinary meeting of parliament's legal affairs committee. It is set for 14 October at 14:30, the party's press office said. The committee will look at a bill that would require every pardon decree issued since 13 July 1991 to be published in the State Gazette.

One third of the committee's members can call a meeting. PP drafted the amendments to the State Gazette Act, and its MPs filed them on 17 September. The bill went to the legal affairs committee the next day, parliament's website shows.

Under the text, the gazette's official section would carry the pardon decrees of the president or vice president from 13 July 1991 until the law takes effect. The bill also scraps the exception that keeps decrees on appointments to the president's office staff from being published.

PP says the current exception does not give the public a single, lasting official record of the decrees issued. The party says this is a particular problem for pardons in crimes of high public interest, and that it erodes trust in the presidency and the justice system.

The authors say a published decree would show how the law classed the crime, the type and length of the sentence and how much of it had been served. They say that without the exception for the president's office staff, the make-up of the president's pardons commission would become known. Its members' names are not public now.

A few days ago, PP asked President Iliana Yotova for documents and information on why Ognyan Atanasov, who was convicted of serious crimes, was pardoned. The request follows a video that has been circulated. The party says it shows Atanasov taking part in a fight between prisoners in the prison hospital on 16 November 2022. He was pardoned on 5 December 2022, three weeks later.