8. Public statement concerning Bulgaria (made on 26 March 2015) 1. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) has carried out ten visits to Bulgaria since 1995. In the course of those visits, delegations of the Committee have visited all but one prison, several investigation detention facilities (IDFs) and numerous police establishments in the country. 2. Major shortcomings have been identified during the above-mentioned visits, especially as concerns the police and penitentiary establishments. Repeated recommendations have been made over the last 20 years concerning these two areas. In its reports, the CPT has many times drawn the Bulgarian authorities’ attention to the fact that the principle of co-operation between State Parties and the CPT, as set out in Article 3 of the Convention establishing the Committee, is not limited to steps taken to facilitate the tasks of a visiting delegation. It also requires that decisive action be taken to improve the situation in the light of the CPT’s recommendations. The vast majority of these recommendations have remained unimplemented, or only partially implemented. In the course of the Committee’s visits to Bulgaria in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2015, the CPT’s delegations witnessed a lack of decisive action by the authorities leading to a steady deterioration in the situation of persons deprived of their liberty. 3. In the report on its 2012 visit, the Committee expressed its extreme concern about the lack of progress observed in the Bulgarian prison system General Report of the CPT, 2015 ► Page 70 and stressed that this could oblige the CPT to consider having recourse to Article 10, paragraph 2, of the European Convention on the Prevention of Torture or Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.20 This procedure was set in motion after the March/April 2014 visit; indeed, the Committee’s findings during that visit demonstrated a persistent failure by the Bulgarian authorities to address certain fundamental shortcomings in the treatment and conditions of detention of persons deprived of their liberty. The visit report highlighted a number of long-standing concerns, some of them dating back to the very first periodic visit to Bulgaria in 1995, as regards the phenomenon of ill-treatment (both in the police and the prison context), inter-prisoner violence, prison overcrowding, poor material conditions of detention in IDFs and prisons, inadequate prison health-care services and low custodial staffing levels, as well as concerns related to discipline, segregation and contact with the outside world. 4. The responses of the Bulgarian authorities to the report on the CPT’s 2014 visit and to the letter by which the Committee has informed the authorities of the opening of the procedure set out in Article 10, paragraph 2, of the Convention have, to say the least, not alleviated the CPT’s concerns. In particular, the responses were succinct, contained very little new information 20. If the Party fails to co-operate or refuses to improve the situation in the light of the Committee’s recommendations, the Committee may decide, after the Party has had an opportunity to make known its views, by a majority of two-thirds of its members to make a public statement on the matter.”