A new Act of the Commercial Registry shall be in force from 01.01.2008. It concerns the procedure of registration of commercial companies at the territory of Bulgaria, which procedure shall be amended at whole. This fact could be interesting for the investors who would like to carry out business activity in Bulgaria through real estate transactions. As you are aware, after joining of Republic of Bulgaria to the European Union there are still limitations for the foreign citizens who wish to buy a land or ideal part of land in Bulgaria. They could own a land through a company registered on the territory of Republic of Bulgaria under the local requirements, which company shall be entitled to buy the property as an independent legal person.
Until the end of 2007 the commercial companies in Bulgaria shall be established under the present procedure regulated by the Commercial Act. According to the law the company is established under court decision issued by the respective competent court where the head office of the company is located. The court decision is final and could not be appealed.
According to the new act said above the documents for set up of commercial companies have to be filed before an authorized person (jurist) who will check it and take decision to register or to not register the company. His refusal could be appealed before the Court of second instance and the decision of the court could be appealed before the Supreme Court, which decision is final.
Following the above you can make conclusion that the procedure under the new act will be longer and may be more difficult. There is still no practice and there are no drafted templates of the documents for registration. Therefore in our professional opinion the investors could use the rest of time till the end of the year for registering a company under the old procedure in order to avoid future complications and difficulties.
