Insights

A significant step forward in our employment legislation was the possibility provided by the 2016 amendments for a part of the employment documents to be created and stored as electronic documents. This possibility is detailed in a secondary legislative act of the Council of Ministers - the Ordinance on the type and requirements for the creation and storage of electronic documents in the employee's employment record. *This publication is in Bulgarian.

The termination of the employment contract on the employer's initiative in exchange for an agreed compensation under Article 331 of the Labour Code (LC) is one of the frequently applied grounds in practice. This is due to its advantage for both the employer and the employee. Assoc. Prof. Martin Zahariev, PhD, discusses some specific features of termination on this ground, which are good to know for both parties of the employment relationship. *The article is in Bulgarian.

Bulgarian PDPC has adopted a list of processing operations that require prior consultation which is addressed to the authorities subject to Directive (EU) 2016/680. This list does not directly applies to the accitvities of the controllers and processors subject to GDPR, but provides an indication for operations which rise high risks and require DPIA and eventual prior consultation under GDPR as well.

On 8 June 2022, the Council for Electronic Media has initiated a public consultation on a Draft Code of Conduct on Measures to Assess, Label and Restrict Access to Programmes which are Harmful or Pose a Risk to Affect Adversely the Physical, Mental, Moral and/or Social Development of Children, pursuant to Decision No. RD-05-44/8 June 2022. CEM has prepared the Draft Code jointly with the Association of Bulgarian Radio and Television Broadcasters (ABBRO), the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) and the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR).

On 7 July 2022, Act for Amendment and Supplement to the Criminal Code was promulgated in the State Gazette. The amendments to the existing legal framework are in the field of computer-related crimes (including cybercrime and crimes against critical infrastructure), the crimes against intellectual and industrial property, and plagiarism, as well as the crimes against online child sexual exploitation. The amendments can be narrowed down to changes expanding the minimum and maximum thresholds for imprisonment for the described fields and changes in the maximum amount of the fines.