Almost half of the legislation of Bulgaria is outdated. Most of the laws have been adopted in the 50s of the last century during a communist society organization regime. Almost none of them is compatible to the free market and economics of the current society. An exception from that are the new laws adopted under the pressure of the EU legislation conformity requirements (such as competition  and consumer protection legislation).

But the laws that concern regular property buyers in Bulgaria are still obsolete. I’m talking about the Ownership Act (created 1951) and the Obligations and Contracts Act (created 1950). These are the main laws that regulate the consequences when a person buys a property in Bulgaria. The worst case is the off-plan purchases. There is no regulation regarding off-plan purchases. Therefore the judges started to extract relevant regulations from two separate contracts: the contract for manufacture and preliminary contract for purchase/sale.

This causes controversial court practice and different court resolution in similar cases (e.g. default of the developer and failure for refund). The controversy in the practice is striking in the different parts of Bulgaria. Although all courts should mind the Supreme Court’s interpretations, the judges are influence by other factors. The judges usually are afraid to think out-0f-the-box and rule rather conservative.  They are not involved in the “real world” themselves because they are living in a “closed system” - the judicial system is not reformed at all. This is one of the biggest criticisms of EU towards Bulgaria. The corruption is also one of the biggest issues in our judicial system. Even the United states ambassador Mr. James Warlick observed this negative  practice.