Implementation of the EU Damages Directive in Bulgaria

Abstract

On 3 January 2018, a new amendment to the Protection of Competition Act (‘PCA’) was published in the Bulgarian State Gazette. Its aim is to transpose into national law the requirements of Directive 2014/104/EU on antitrust damages actions (the ‘Directive’), adopted on 26 November 2014 and published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 5 December 2014. EU Member States were obliged to implement the Directive in their national legal systems by 27 December 2016. The required legislative action was completed in Bulgaria only at the very end of 2017, due to a large extent to the intense political climate during the past couple of years which disrupted the normal legislative process. And while delays could be blamed on political turmoil, no reasonable explanations can be found for some of the deviations introduced in the final statutory text.