News

6 March 2024

Ombudsman Diana Kovacheva presented today to the Ambassadors of the EU member states in Bulgaria the priorities of the Ombudsman Institution’s activity and reported the more notable achievements in her performance. The meeting was at the invitation of the Ambassador of Belgium in Bulgaria H. E. Mr. Frederic Meurice within the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU.

Prof. Kovacheva informed the diplomats about the most pressing problems that are on the legislating agenda and that are raised by citizens in their complaints and reports to the Ombudsman Institution.

“At the start of my term as an Ombudsman in May 2020, at the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the institution was approached by 13,000 citizens and some 49,000 citizens were offered assistance to protect their rights. Today, four years after, the increase is 30% - nearly 15,500 in 2023,” the Ombudsman pointed out. As Prof. Kovacheva said, in their communication people complain most often against the abuse by the monopolies with high prices and poor quality of the service and emphasized that these are the Sofia District Heating Company, the water supply and sewerage companies, the mobile service operators, the providers of electricity, among other.

To prove her statement, she quoted statistics from the 2023 annual report of the Ombudsman Institution from which it is clear that usually the highest number of complaints report violations of consumer rights – about 37%, and violations by banks, debt collection agents and fast loan lenders.

“Unfortunately, 2023 was another year in a row when no concrete steps were taken by the National Assembly to solve three major problems in the field of consumer rights. The first step was to pass an Act on the Insolvency of Natural Persons that is commonly known as the indebtedness for life act. The second step was to codify the operation of the debt collection agents. And the third step was to pass the needed legislation to address the unequal terms and conditions in the contracts with fast loan lenders.” Prof. Kovacheva said that she hopes that the present National Assembly would do it.

However, she emphasized that despite the unresolved problems, there are quite a few that, following her initiative, were recognized by the Members of Parliament and voted by a large majority in the house.

“If 2021 and 2022 were the years of granted constitutional petitions – a tool to which the Ombudsman resorts to protect hundreds of thousands of citizens against acts of administrative outrage and harassment, 2022 and 2023 were the years when Parliament passed a number of important pieces of legislation that I, in my capacity of Ombudsman, had drafted and submitted,” Prof. Kovacheva explained. The example that she gave shows that, inter alia, today the MPs approved her proposed legal text to allow high school leavers a second chance to take a graduation (matriculation) exam if they did not perform well the first time and sit university entrance exams with the new grade scored.

The EU countries’ Ambassadors congratulated Ombudsman Diana Kovacheva on her performance and on her election as a judge on the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) where she is to start work in April this year.