Employers neither supported nor opposed the two bills to control inflation, submitted by "Progressive Bulgaria" to the parliament - for changes to the Competition Protection Act and the Consumer Protection Act.
"The National Council for Tripartite Cooperation did not reach unanimity on points 1 and 2 of the agenda. The employer organizations refrained from supporting the two bills, but will approach them constructively. They will provide specific texts for amending and supplementing the texts of the two bills between the first and second reading. The trade union organizations in principle supported the proposed bills under points one and two," announced Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Galab Donev, quoted by novini.bg.
"The members of the National Trade Union Congress, with the exception of the Bulgarian Confederation of Trade Unions, reached unanimity on the proposed increase in the amount of the minimum pension for insurance length of service and age from 322.37 euros to 347.51 euros, effective July 1, 2026," he added.
"The main interest was aroused by the texts of the two bills, related to the amendment and supplement of the Consumer Protection Act and the Competition Protection Act. All four employer organizations approached the content of these texts with an extremely committed and responsible approach. The four employer organizations did not state that they were against these texts. What we have seen is that in this type of texts, we have decided to abstain from supporting them, but to state that the written opinions submitted by us, the proposals in them, the additional possibilities for corrections, for amending and refining texts between the two readings can lead to support for some final texts, as long as they do not distort the market, do not create unnecessary administrative obstacles, do not create ambiguities that would put at risk the implementation of the goals set in the draft laws," explained the employers' position, Rumen Radev from the Bulgarian Association of Employers.
“What is particularly important for us is not to explicitly impute the philosophy that the trader and the participant in this entire pricing process in general is necessarily guilty or has made a mistake in their behavior”, he pointed out.
Radev is confident that there is a possibility to make good, adequate corrections and to adopt laws that will actually allow to avoid the abuse of excessive market power and to achieve a much more balanced and proportionate distribution of the individual components in pricing and price mark-ups.