At the initiative of “Democratic Bulgaria“, members of parliament submitted a proposal to establish a temporary commission to establish facts and circumstances that impede the effective counteraction by the competent state bodies against hybrid attacks and other activities of foreign special services in the Republic of Bulgaria, including sabotage and attacks against the life and health of Bulgarian citizens.
The immediate reason for the request is the successive fires and explosions at sites of “EMKO“ Ltd. on August 10, 2026 and September 12, 2026. At the same time, according to publicly available data from 2011 to the present, more than ten serious incidents have occurred in enterprises and warehouses of the Bulgarian defense industry, some of which have resulted in human casualties, damage to the health of Bulgarian citizens and significant material damage. Among them are explosions and fires in production facilities of VMZ - Sopot, in warehouses of “EMKO“ Ltd. in “Arsenal“ - Kazanlak, etc. Most of the affected sites are part of the so-called. Strategic list of importance for the national security and defense potential of the country.
“Current threats against the member states of the European Union and NATO include a combination of sabotage, subversive actions, cyberattacks, intelligence activities, information impact, economic pressure and the use of intermediaries. The creation of a temporary commission is necessary so that the National Assembly can receive comprehensive and systematized information about the various manifested forms of the alleged hybrid impact and exercise parliamentary control over the effectiveness of the institutional countermeasure“, the State Defense Committee stated.
Specifically, the proposed commission establishes and analyzes the facts and circumstances for the period from January 1, 2011 and covers: explosions, fires and other serious incidents in production and storage facilities of defense industry enterprises. encroachments against the life and health of Bulgarian citizens, when there is evidence of a connection with the activities of foreign special services or with the incidents under item 1; the presence of connections between the individual cases in view of the time, place, selected targets, methods used and the established movement and behavior of persons of interest; data on direct or indirect participation of foreign special services, including through the use of intermediaries, local criminal structures, persons with a concealed identity or remotely recruited contractors; the revealed cases of espionage in favor of foreign countries; the actions of the Ministry of Interior, the State Agency for “National Security“, the State Agency for “Intelligence“, the “Military Intelligence“ service, the Ministry of Defense, the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Bulgaria and other competent authorities in preventing, detecting and clarifying the above cases; exchange of information and interaction between competent Bulgarian authorities, as well as their cooperation with partner services and authorities of other countries, the European Union and NATO; the measures taken after each of the cases considered to eliminate the identified vulnerabilities and to increase the physical, technical, cyber and counterintelligence protection of defense industry facilities.