site.btaParliament to Debate Amendments to Environmental Protection Act

Parliament is scheduled to debate at first reading two bills amending the Environmental Protection Act, according to the legislature’s agenda for Thursday's plenary sitting.

One of the bills was tabled by Vazrazhdane leader Kostadin Kostadinov and a group of MPs, while the other was submitted by Nikolay Nankov of GERB-UDF and MPs from the ruling majority.

The Vazrazhdane bill proposes extending the deadline for owners of groundwater abstraction facilities, including wells for personal use, to apply for registration of their facilities in the basin directorate registers. The current deadline expires on November 28, 2025, and the proposal seeks to extend it by five years, until November 28, 2030.

The bill submitted by the ruling coalition also provides for an extension of the registration deadline for personal water sources, but until 2033, aiming to allow sufficient time for preparation and to introduce a simplified registration procedure.

The agenda further includes the continuation of the first reading of amendments to the Ministry of the Interior Act, as well as the first reading of changes to the National Protection Service Act and the Labour Code.