site.btaLobbying Law and Anti-Corruption Reform Seen as Key to Unlocking Funds under Recovery and Resilience Plan

Of all the measures for the second and third payments from the EU under the national Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), the tenth one concerning the lobbying law remains to be finalized and the anti-corruption reform must be completed, outgoing Justice Minister Georgi Georgiev said during question time in the National Assembly on Friday.

MP Yavor Haitov of the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms asked the minister about the suspension of EUR 215 million under the RRP due to the unfinished reform of the Commission for Countering Corruption (CCC), and more specifically its political independence.

Minister Georgiev explained that, as regards the reform of the CCC's activities, the RRP negotiated by the Kiril Petkov cabinet (in office from December 2021 until August 2022) set out specific parameters. Subsequently, however, a Constitutional Court ruling in 2024 declared unconstitutional the introduction of a qualified majority in the National Assembly, insofar as such a mechanism can be introduced only through a constitutional amendment. In this connection, the European Commission considers a simple majority for electing CCC members to provide insufficient guarantees, which is why over the past two months the Bulgarian authorities have been engaged in intensive communication to negotiate the model under which the process should continue, he said.

As of January 2025, when the Rosen Zhelyazkov cabinet took office, Bulgaria had a total of 10 reforms in the Justice sector to complete whose adoption deadlines had expired, with the exception of the reform linked to the sixth payment concerning the Administrative Procedure Code, Georgiev noted.

He reported that, under an "absolutely unprecedented workload", the Justice Ministry has drafted more than 50 regulatory acts in 11 months, half of them laws and the other half ordinances. Georgiev thanked the National Assembly, noting that more than 80% of the Justice Ministry's proposals have been supported by all political groups, thereby unblocking BGN 4 billion under the RRP.