The civil initiative “Antispecula“ has raised the alarm that the obligation of large retail chains that have their own websites to publish price lists for 101 categories of basic products daily, in force since August 8, is being massively disregarded. However, the Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) has not imposed sanctions in the amount provided for by law. For comparison, the Greek authorities have already sanctioned chains with a total of 2.2 million euros last week.
“The law on the introduction of the euro provides for fines of 10,000 to 100,000 leva for a first violation and from 20,000 to 200,000 leva for a second violation. If the CPC had fulfilled its obligations and powers, for the last 2 months the offending traders should have been fined a total of between 1 and 10 million leva.“, notes “Antispecula“ in its position on social networks.
We note that the total amount of sanctions of up to 10 million leva could have been imposed if the CPC had fined the offenders already for the first failure to comply with the provisions of Art. 55b of the ZVERB - on August 8. In this scenario, for each day that passes after that, in which retail chains continue to fail to fulfill their obligations under the ZVERB, the Commission could sanction them with up to BGN 200,000 for repeated violations.
The initiative also points to a serious gap in the public infrastructure: two months after the changes to the ZVERB came into effect, the kolkostruva.bg platform, intended for retailers without their own website, who must publish their prices there, is still not functioning.