National Assembly approved on first reading the amendments to the Public Procurement Act at its sitting dated 22 July 2008. The Bill was initiated by the Council of Ministers. The Bill foresees a stronger control over the spending of the ISPA and PHARE funds. It aims at improving the legislation in the field of public procurement and to facilitate the parties to the procedures and the assigning of contracts. The changes foresee also the setting up of an effective administration for preliminary control and to improve the conditions for correct and uniform implementation of the law.

At the same sitting parliament approved on first reading two bills regarding lobbying – the one submitted by MPs Luben Dilov and Assia Mihailova (UDF) and the second by Boyko Velikov (CB) and a group of MPs. The idea is to combine the two drafts between the first and second reading. Lobbying interfering with concessions, registration and licensing of radio and television activities, tax administration, state financial control, the judiciary, the Constitutional Court and the State Audit Office will be prohibited.

Parliament adopted amendments to the Ministry of the Interior Act. According to the amended provisions a specialized directorate, called “Operational technical activities” will combine the functions of the two previous units dealing with the same activities. The Director will be appointed by the Minister of the Interior. The employees of the Directorate will be in charge of the activities regarding the use of special intelligence means, control of data acquiring and transfer and cable communications exchange of information.

The changes to the Ministry of the Interior Act stipulate that only employees of the Directorate “ Pretrial investigation” will be in charge of crime investigation and abolishes the mandatory requirements for these personnel to have a law degree. There will be four groups of policemen investigating crimes. For the first two consisting of Chief and Senior Investigator the law degree remains mandatory. For the two other groups – Investigator and Junior investigator only a higher education will be required. They will only be asked to pass qualification courses on criminal investigation. The employees of the Directorate will only have investigative functions and no other police duties.