Bulgaria’s ruling center-right party GERB has frozen a very controversial piece of legislation dealing with the sale of land.

According to the proposed amendments to the Agricultural Land Ownership Act, owners of land would be obliged to offer their property for sale first to their tenant farmers, and the latter would have the right to determine the price.

The draft law has been criticized severely by the opposition as serving the interests of lobbying groups.

The authors of the amendments Desislava Taneva and Dimitar Avramov from GERB have told the Parliamentary committee on agriculture that they are withdrawing their legislative motion because they failed to reach an agreement with the legal committee of the Parliament, which unanimously declared that the proposed legislation is unconstitutional.

Earlier Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naydenov said the law will probably be withdrawn at the request of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov who decided to inspect closer all pieces of legislation called “lobbyist” by the media.

The controversial amendments were adopted at first reading in mid April with the votes only of the ruling party GERB and the opposition ethnic Turkish party DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms). Even the nationalist Ataka party, which is a staunch supporter of GERB, voted against it.

Bulgarian Prime Minister initially defended the amendment by saying, “Six or seven large-scale agricultural funds want to buy out all the land in Bulgaria, and we have complied with the demands of the tenant farmers, that is, the people who actually work in the fields.”

The other partner of the GERB party, the Blue Coalition, asked the Parliamentary Committee on conflict of interests to inspect the three authors of the amendment; the third author is MP Stoyan Guyzelev from GERB, who is partner at Sortovi Semena – Burgas, one of the largest producers of grain for planting in Bulgaria.

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