Bulgaria: Parliament announced ten new bills with digital aspect

Bozhidar Bozhanov, the former Bulgarian Minister of E-Government and member of Parliament, introduced ten new bills, each having a digital aspect. He stated, ”Yesterday, the amendment to the Law on e-Government, which we prepared while I was a minister, passed the first reading in committee.

Following is the list of ten new bills-

1. ZID of the Law on e-Government: It regulates measures under the Recovery and Resilience Plan, the abolition of certificates and the obligation to use a qualified electronic signature. It foresees the cancellation of the credentials with which citizens have been turned into couriers of the administration. It also introduces complete electronification of registers, electronic delivery and slips, and reminders of expiring documents.

2. ZID of the Road Traffic Act: The first objective is to take steps to curb recidivism on the road. An obligation for the Ministry of Internal Affairs to stop all cars whose owners have five or more undelivered tickets on the road and a commitment to publish individual anonymized data on all violations. This way, society will monitor whether the Ministry of Internal Affairs fulfils its duty.

The second objective is to reduce the administrative burden and make it easier for bona fide drivers. The government decided to remove all stickers from the windscreen, remove the blue ticket and introduce the possibility of electronic payment of receipts without going to the traffic police to hand them.

3. ZD of the Law on Public Procurement: the goal is to achieve maximum transparency and with which to end schemes with the so-called engineering. An obligation is introduced to publish open data to publish the contracts concluded without procedures to post requests under framework contracts and disclose affiliation to the DS to members of the bodies of companies that earn more than half a million from public procurement.

4. CORPORATE INCOME TAXATION LAW:  Introduction of electronic meal vouchers. Something so simple as grinding as a topic since 2015 finally finds legislative expression.

5. ZD of the Electoral Code: The government foresee access to the code without a time limit, a public plan for conducting the elections, sample checks and mandatory publication of cryptographic information. This will eliminate the support for ‘touching’ machines, and the process will be better planned and predictable, instilling more confidence.

6. ZID of the Civil Procedure Code: Electronic order proceedings are introduced, as this is a tool to ease the work of overburdened courts at the expense of unburdened ones.

7. ZID of the Commercial Law: In addition to creating an entirely new type of company with variable capital suitable for start-up companies raising investments, The government anticipates dropping the specimen signature when registering a company for Bulgarian citizens.

8. Law on the protection of whistleblowers, who publicly disclose information about violations: The bill provides for comprehensive regulation of the safety of whistleblowers, but in the specific case of reports of corruption, anonymized at the time of submission electronically, with cryptographic means, such that the anti-corruption commission cannot see who the submitter is, but the data can be de-anonymized by the court if it is necessary to file a lawsuit for damages.

9. ZID of the Law on non-profit legal entities: provides something small but facilitates a large number of non-governmental organizations – holding meetings electronically of their governing bodies.

10. E-Commerce Law Enforcement: Measures for major online platforms like Facebook to limit trolls’ influence (fake accounts used for propaganda). The government increases the protection of free speech with an out-of-court appeals process.

The minister of E-government emphasizes that many laws still need to be updated. The government will soon introduce amendments to the Labor Code to submit an electronic workbook. 

According to Bozhanov, “With this legislative program, we relieve citizens and businesses, modernize the administration and make the spending of public funds more transparent”.