Parliament's legal affairs committee has asked the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) to check whether any candidates for the council from parliament's quota appear in the files on the "Martin Bozhanov – the Notary", "Eight Dwarfs" and "Krasimir Georgiev – Krasyo the Black" cases. If a candidate's name turns up, the SJC will send the committee all documents that mention that person.

The committee will also ask for personnel files and records of disciplinary penalties. For candidates who are serving or former magistrates, it will ask the SJC's prosecutors' and judges' panels for orders on appointment, promotion and secondment, performance appraisals and any disciplinary penalties. It will ask the SJC's Inspectorate for the results of its checks.

For candidates who are university lecturers rather than prosecutors, judges or investigators, the committee will ask their universities for professional files. It wants to see whether they have any disciplinary penalties and how their careers developed. It will ask the bar associations for records of disciplinary penalties against lawyers.

Nadezhda Yordanova of Democratic Bulgaria and Stoyu Stoev of We Continue the Change jointly put forward the proposal for checks on the three cases. Yordanova said there is a very large amount of information, so the sponsors suggest that parliament receive only data on involvement, if the check finds any. She said the public must be sure that the candidates have no such involvement.

Stoev said the aim is a guarantee that those sent to the SJC have no dependencies, can withstand pressure and cannot be influenced. Instead of asking all courts whether permission for special surveillance means (SRS) was sought, he proposed asking the SRS Bureau whether such means were used on the candidates.

Petar Petrov of Revival said SRS are often used illegally in Bulgaria to exert influence. He said that in some cases all the information gathered through SRS was deliberately destroyed, so the check must also establish whether any information was destroyed.

Ivan Vachev of Progressive Bulgaria said he will not personally back any of the proposals to demand documents on the candidates. He asked whether the candidates would be on an equal footing if all the material arrived for one and none for another. Vachev also said candidates will have the right to challenge the vote, and this would be a "bomb", because the SJC could not then be elected. He said a special law governs SRS and the committee has no power to demand information from the Bureau. He also asked what a check on whether SRS were used on a candidate would achieve.

Velislav Velichkov of We Continue the Change said that when wiretapping and tracking are lawful, SRS results count as authentic and cannot be challenged.

Committee chair Yanka Tyankova said that whether SRS were used on a candidate is not, in itself, a reason to bar them from a post. She said conclusions about professional and moral qualities on that basis alone would have no legal grounds, and the use of SRS cannot automatically lead to a negative assessment.