Legal Blog

Married to a Bulgarian a residence paradox

The Bulgarian Migration Directorate misapplies the Directive 2004/38/EC of the European Parliament. The Directive regulates the regime of free movement of EU citizens and members of their families. The particular rule that has been misapplied is that the citizens of EU member states are under the same regime as the members of their family in other EU host country. The only difference is that, in some EU member states, the family members may be required to apply for entrance visa.

Company Re-registration what a fuss!

If you happen to be involved in the company re-registration fuss in Bulgaria, you would probably know how necesary is to keep a stiff upper lip. The first step that you have to make is to acquire a certificate for re-registration from the court. The Commercial Register Act specifies that the latter certificate shall be issued within three days after the application is submitted. Instead of three days, the court administration issues the certificate five days after the the application is submitted.

The new Companies register entered into force on 01 January 2008

As from 01 January 2008, a new Companies register started in Bulgaria. Pursuant to the Commercial Register Act each company registered in Bulgaria have to re-register. The latter action is necessary because the company information have to be moved from the Court Register to the new Companies Register. There won’t be any due state fees if the companies don’t make changes to their status. If you, for example, want to increase your capital or replace your Manager: that will be treated as a change in the company’s status and a state fee will be due.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

We wish all our clients and prospect clients all the best. May the New Year 2008 brings a lot of joy and happiness to everyone. Happy New Year!

Unconscientious Bulgarian workers take advantage of the British expats

The British community in Bulgaria expands very fast. Most of the family couples buy countryside houses in poor condition and usually major (re)construction works are necessary before one can live in such house. The new owners hire local construction workers to do the rebuild but do not realize that sometimes they can be taken advantage of. The British (or any other) expats must keep in mind that each assigning of construction works should be in writing.

Free access to Bulgarian legislation

The Bulgarian Parliament is now hearing a draft law which stipulates that the Bulgarian State Gazette shall be published on the Internet. For the time being, the State Gazette is published only on a hard copy which costs 0,80 Lev (approx. 0,40 EUR) per copy. The above fact is in collision with a principle stipulated in the Bulgarian Constitution: each Bulgarian citizen has the right to access state information in case not explicitly marked as classified.

Residence certificates for EU members' citizens

Every citizen of an EU member state who wants to stay more than three months in Bulgaria has to notify the Migration Directorate for that stay. The latter issues a long-term residence certificate (“the Certificate”) and an Unique Citizen Number (“UCN”) is assigned to the foreigner. Prior to Bulgaria’s accession to EU, ID cards were issued to every foreigner who resided for more than three months in the country. Now, as Bulgaria is an EU member state, the citizens of other EU countries don’t have to obtain such ID cards.

Securing Creative Commons website content legal actions

Regarding my previous post, now I want to outline some details about obtaining evidence for copyright of website content licensed under Creative Commons. There are certain difficulties when applying the method mentioned in my previous post, because of the nature of the Creative Commons license. A CC-ed content may have more than one author either initially or later on, when the content is distributed via the Internet. If the original author(s) have put the content under by-nc-nd clause or under by-nd clause of the Creative Commons, no derivative content is allowed and therefore the author(s) may take advantage of my explanations in the later post here in the Legal Blog.

Go Eastern Bulgarian country houses

Over the past three and four years, foreigners have come to Bulgaria searching for a peaceful place to relax or to spend the retirement years. Most of these foreigners come from the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany. So many people couldn’t be wrong about their impression of the slow-paced life in Bulgaria’s countryside: it’s relaxed with breath-taking natural beauty. There even are villages in Bulgaria, where nearly half of the households are English (eg.

How to protect my copyright over website content

No-one is ultimately protected from website content theft. Every kid with knowledge in HTML and PHP would succeed in stealing your web-site’s articles. Of course, if you have put the (c) sign, there is copyright over the content. But the difficulties come when you undertake legal actions to protect this copyrighted content. Here in Bulgaria, the litigation proceedings are not so clear. I mean that the court will take into consideration each document evidencing who is the author of the content.