Bulgaria

[BG] Telecommunications Law Adopted

IRIS 1998-8:1/15

Gergana Petrova

Georgiev, Todorov & Co

The end of the Parliamentary Session in Bulgaria was marked by the second voting and the adoption of The Law on Telecommunications. The adoption of the Law was preceded by the ruling of the Constitutional Court that had addressed the most disputed problem raised during the discussions of the Law, namely whether the Bulgarian Constitution requires a concession regime for telecommunications operators as it had been foreseen in the draft law text? The Constitutional Court answered this question in the negative and confirmed the legislator's right to evaluate and choose between concession and licence regime for the telecommunication activities. Thus, during the second voting of the Law the concession regime provided for by the draft text was cancelled and only the license (individual or common) regime remained applicable to telecommunications operators. This was the most substantial change related to the second vote of the Law's text. As in the draft, the ruling and supervision of the telecommunications activities will be assigned to the State Telecommunications Committee, the Council on the National Radio-Frequency Spectrum (to the Council of Ministers) and the Committee on Post and Telecommunications. The Law shall also facilitate the forthcoming privatization procedure of the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company, which appears to be one of the most attractive privatization projects in Bulgaria.