Oc­to­ber 20181An amend­ment bill is cur­rently pending at the Bul­gari­an par­lia­ment con­tain­ing sev­er­al sig­ni­fic­ant changes, which are not re­flec­ted in this guide. Ref­er­ences to the amend­ment bill are made...

See the Over­view of the Rep­res­ent­at­ive Ac­tions Dir­ect­ive >> 1. Do you have a spe­cif­ic pro­ced­ure or pro­ced­ures for bring­ing “opt-in” class ac­tions?  If so, please out­line such pro­ced­ure(s) and...

Chapter 1: The frame­work boiled down 1. What are the rel­ev­ant laws which reg­u­late ad­vert­ise­ment in your coun­try? Pro­tec­tion of Com­pet­i­tion Act;Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Act; Health Law;Reg­u­la­tion (EU) 2017/2394; Act...

Pat­ents: As­sign­ment 1. How may a pat­ent be as­signed (by law and/or trans­ac­tion) and is it re­quired to re­cord the as­sign­ment in the na­tion­al pat­ent re­gister to be­come ef­fect­ive?  A pat­ent can be trans­ferred...

1. What is the gen­er­al le­gis­lat­ive frame­work reg­u­lat­ing pack­aging and plastic waste in your jur­is­dic­tion? On a na­tion­al level, the Bul­gari­an Waste Man­age­ment Act (“WMA”) provides the gen­er­al le­gis­lat­ive...

The COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic has left its mark on the European in­vest­ment mar­ket. In­vest­ment volumes were around 23% lower than in the pre­vi­ous year, 2019, with its re­cord per­form­ance. Buy­ers fo­cused primar­ily on prop­er­ties with stable in­come and those only min­im­ally af­fected by the pan­dem­ic. The num­ber of trans­ac­tions in which steps were taken to en­sure the buy­er met its fin­an­cial ob­lig­a­tions was at a re­cord high. The trend to­wards more buy­er-friendly ar­range­ments con­tin­ued. Those are the key find­ings of the CMS European Real Es­tate Deal Point Study 2021.For the latest edi­tion of this sur­vey of the European real es­tate trans­ac­tion mar­ket, in­ter­na­tion­al com­mer­cial law firm CMS sys­tem­at­ic­ally as­sessed and eval­u­ated more than 1,900 real es­tate agree­ments on which it ad­vised in coun­tries across Europe from the be­gin­ning of 2010 to the end of 2020.The key find­ings:In­vestors fo­cus on stable in­comeThe COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic led to a change in in­vestor in­terest in the in­di­vidu­al as­set classes. Buy­ers fo­cused primar­ily on prop­er­ties with stable in­come and those that were only min­im­ally af­fected by the pan­dem­ic. Lo­gist­ics and res­id­en­tial prop­er­ties were es­pe­cially pop­u­lar.Of­fice real es­tate re­mained the strongest as­set class in Europe, but its share of the mar­ket fell to a re­cord low of 30%. De­mand for re­tail prop­er­ties re­mained at a con­sist­ently low level (15%). Lo­gist­ics real es­tate per­formed par­tic­u­larly well, post­ing a rise to 19% , a new re­cord. The pro­por­tion of in­vest­ment go­ing in­to spe­cial­ist prop­er­ties such as ho­tels fell sig­ni­fic­antly (14%). Res­id­en­tial real es­tate proved pop­u­lar with in­vestors, with its share rising to 22%.Sellers tak­ing steps to en­sure that buy­ers meet their fin­an­cial ob­lig­a­tionsDur­ing the pan­dem­ic, an in­creased need for se­cur­ity on the part of sellers was ap­par­ent. The pro­por­tion of trans­ac­tions in which steps were taken to en­sure the buy­er met its fin­an­cial ob­lig­a­tions rose to a re­cord high of 64%. In pre­vi­ous years, se­cur­ity was agreed in less than 50% of all trans­ac­tions.This high level is due to the in­creased de­sire for se­cur­ity on the part of sellers as a res­ult of the pan­dem­ic; they were of­ten un­cer­tain about the buy­er’s solvency go­ing for­ward. As a means of provid­ing se­cur­ity, both bank guar­an­tees (17%) and a not­ary’s es­crow ac­count (10%) be­came less pop­u­lar. In many cases, in con­trast, the buy­er made an ad­vance pay­ment (29%). In 9% of trans­ac­tions, use was made of sub­mis­sion to im­me­di­ate en­force­ment.Risk al­loc­a­tion in con­tracts: buy­ers catch­ing up in a seller-friendly mar­ket­Buy­ers were able to strengthen their po­s­i­tion fur­ther in 2020 with re­gard to risk al­loc­a­tion in con­tracts. In a mar­ket en­vir­on­ment that re­mained very seller-friendly, they suc­ceeded in ob­tain­ing fa­vour­able con­tract terms more of­ten than in pre­vi­ous years.As part of the war­ranty, guar­an­tees were again agreed more of­ten in fa­vour of buy­ers. The per­cent­age of agree­ments with in­di­vidu­al li­ab­il­ity pro­vi­sions in­creased to 75%. It was com­mon prac­tice to provide for both sub­ject­ive and ob­ject­ive guar­an­tees.The pro­por­tion of deals with seller-friendly lim­its on li­ab­il­ity, such as de min­imis and bas­ket clauses and caps, dropped slightly be­low the pri­or-year level in 2020. The up­ward trend seen over many years in agree­ments aimed at lim­it­ing li­ab­il­ity has thus been curbed some­what, while buy­ers were able to ne­go­ti­ate more fa­vour­able con­tract terms more of­ten than be­fore.Buy­ers also pre­pared ground with re­gard to the con­trac­tu­al pro­vi­sions on lim­it­a­tion peri­ods. An in­creas­ing num­ber of lim­it­a­tion peri­ods from 18 to 24 months were agreed in 2020, while there was a slight fall in the pro­por­tion of short lim­it­a­tion peri­ods of up to 18 months.Na­tion­al in­vestors more prom­in­entIn­t­er­na­tion­al in­vestors had a tough time in 2020. While in­ter­na­tion­al sellers have been re­spons­ible for the ma­jor­ity of deals since 2017, their per­cent­age dropped back down to 43% in 2020, with na­tion­al in­vestors be­com­ing more act­ive. Na­tion­al in­vestors ac­coun­ted for 48% of deals in 2018, while in 2020, 57% of real es­tate in­vest­ments were made by na­tion­al in­vestors.

The world is get­ting older by the minute.Ac­cord­ing to the the 2021 Age­ing Re­port of the EU, the old-age de­pend­ency ra­tio in the EU’s demo­graph­ic old-age de­pend­ency ra­tio (i.e. the ra­tio between people...

1. What is the defin­i­tion of com­puls­ory li­cens­ing? Com­puls­ory li­cens­ing refers to the leg­al mech­an­ism that the Bul­gari­an Pat­ent Of­fice au­thor­ises oth­ers to im­ple­ment a pat­ent without the per­mis­sion...

Di­git­al Health Apps/Soft­ware 1. How is the soft­ware with­in di­git­al health apps clas­si­fied in your jur­is­dic­tion, and what reg­u­la­tion(s) ap­ply? The soft­ware with­in a di­git­al health app is clas­si­fied...