The National Assembly adopted 11 of the 18 draft amendments to the Criminal Code on first reading, the Bulgarian National Radio reports. Four of the approved drafts were submitted by the Council of Ministers, two by deputies from GERB-SDF and 1 bill each by ITN, "DPS-New Beginning", PP-DB, "BSP-United Left" and "Vazrazhdane".
Before the second reading, the proposals will be merged into a common bill.
Some of the adopted changes increase the penalties and fines for crimes against animals, and when the act is committed in the context of an organized criminal group or for the purpose of obtaining financial gain, the penalty is imprisonment from 2 to 8 years and a fine from 6 thousand to 12 thousand leva.
Another package of changes introduces more severe penalties for drunk driving, speeding, accidents on a pedestrian crossing, etc. Refusing to take an alcohol and drug test is criminalized.
One of the projects submitted by the Council of Ministers provides for a reduction in the minimum sanctions for insult and defamation. The proposal is a response to the condemnatory decisions of the European Court of Human Rights against Bulgaria, reminded Justice Minister Georgi Georgiev:
"This change is necessary, since in the current version of the crime we have a situation in which the punishment under the main composition is higher than that under the qualified composition. This change in the regulation regarding insult and defamation is also among the reforms set out in the NPVU (National Plan for Recovery and Resilience)".
Nikoleta Kuzmanova from the ITN expressed concern about the dangerous trend of continuous changes in the Criminal Code, mostly in the direction of increasing punishments. According to her, this leads to disproportionality of punishments for different types of crimes and a paradox arises – crimes against the person or animals to be identical to leading an organized criminal group, for example.
Therefore, she announced the drafting of an entirely new Criminal Code:
"This tendency - to constantly amend something in this law, is more likely to play a bad joke on us in a very short time. I think we have no doubt that these are issues that we should consider not through the prism of a law amending and supplementing the Criminal Code, but in the context of drafting a new Criminal Code, which would express the penal policy of the state at this moment".
Zlatan Zlatanov from "Vazrazhdane" objected:
"More serious times require more serious measures, the process of erosion of Bulgarian statehood can be stopped precisely with radical, tough measures".
Their proposals to expand the scope of inevitable defense if the attack is accompanied by violence, and to increase the sanctions for fornication and torture of children were rejected.
The bills of the PP-DB - to increase the sanctions for vote buying, providing for imprisonment for an official who participates in or does not report such a crime, as well as the MECH - to criminalize the activities of collection companies that collect their receivables with aggression were also not adopted.