The Agricultural Commission adopts the changes requested by the industry in the Law on Ownership and Use of Agricultural Land at first reading

After lengthy debates, today the members of the Agricultural Commission adopted at first reading the requested changes in the law on ownership and use of agricultural land, concerning the reconfirmation of the contracts which length is over one year. Only the contracts signed by non-owners or unauthorised persons will be subjected to verification and the period shall be extended to 31 July.

MPs did not accept the request of the Chamber of Notaries to increase the notary fee for a contract confirmation from 10BGN to 20BGN, but agreed to make an amendment according to which the registry offices would no longer perform subsequent control of the contracts.

“The campaign is facing a failure, the farmers do not know how to respond and there is a real danger for huge white spots to appear”, said the Agricultural Minister Rumen Porojanov in front of MPs. NAZ seemed satisfied with the changes but in the halls of the Parliament some opinions were shared that the changes will lead to the seizure of the farmland by small farmers who are only users of the land, and their goal is indeed the emergence of a huge number of white spots.

A new problem is about to create tensions in the industry because the chaotic partial changes in the agricultural land relations lead to even more complications. A natural person in Targovishte taking advantage of the interpretation of the SCC in the time period between the changes from 22 May until now, has bought 25% of the agricultural land, cultivated by a cooperative union, and then transferred them to himself as a legal entity. Based on the fact that he owns 25% of the land, the person has declared to the agricultural services the rights to use 100% of the agricultural land, thus the cooperative union has remained unable to declare its rights, although it is the major owner of 75% of the land. The reason is that, according to the existing provisions in the law, the services follow the ‘first in time first in right’ principle.

That is why Rumen Getchev, president of the National Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, proposed another change which states that when two or more than two candidates appear to declare rights to use agricultural land,  the contract of the one who has a higher percentage of the right to use agricultural land should be accepted. This proposal was given for consideration to the MPs and a ruling on it is expected by the Legal Committee before deciding whether the proposed change should be legally accepted. The MPs agreed to its adoption in principle.

The parliamentarians, however, adopted another proposal requesting the non-confirmation of agreements for mutual share of agricultural land signed for a period of more than one year by agricultural cooperatives. The changes are expected to be viewed at the Committee’s second reading next week.