Yesterday the official amendment of the law was promulgated and subsequently entered in force. Now the new deadline for re-registration of companies in Bulgaria is 31 December 2011. This amendment came by surprise preceding the actual bill of amendment of the Commercial register Act.

This extension is actually done by amending the Trade Act, rather than amending the Commercial Register Act itself. This is rather unusual way of the parliament to do it as it confuses the people who expect the actual law which regulated the re-registration process to be amended. In the end, this amendment will cause the actual bill for amendment of Commercial Register Act to be amended to match the new re-registration term. Once again we can see the legal ignorance of the ruling party’s members.

It was quite interesting to observe, at least in Varna, how the Registry Agency was trying to convince people of the deadline extension, when the actual promulgation of the extension was not done. This was quite risky as there was a chance the new deadline not to be adopted as an amendment to the law. Lawyers know that a law enters in force after it has been adopted by the parliament AND promulgated in the State Gazette. Sometimes people forget that the president has a right to “veto” the bill. Hopefully this didn’t happen with the re-registration deadline extension.