Bulgaria updates euro introduction law: info on key changes and act’s guidelines

On 8 August 2025, Bulgaria published amendments to the Law on the Introduction of the Euro in the State Gazette. Effective immediately, the changes introduce key obligations and deadlines for retail businesses:

• Dual price display (8 August 2025 – 8 August 2026): All goods and services must show prices in both leva and euro, using the same font, size, type, and colour.
• Transitional period (until 8 October 2025): No fines (only written notices) will be imposed for breaches of dual pricing and publishing price lists during this time, which will serve as a grace period.
• Price control: From 8 August 2025, any price increases must be justified with objective economic factors. Unjustified hikes carry fines of between BGN 2,000 and BGN 20,000 (EUR 1,023 to EUR 10,226).
• Dual circulation (1-31 January 2026): Both leva and euro will be legal tender. Mixed payments are allowed, but traders may decline them. No conversion fees are permitted. Change must be given in euro unless insufficient euro cash is available.
• Transparency for large retailers: Companies with annual turnover above BGN 10 million in certain sectors must, on a daily basis, submit to the authorities machine-readable price data (including price history and discounts) for a selected list of products in the “large consumer basket” and publish price lists. Submitted data will be published on a CPC-managed public portal. Smaller retailers may join voluntarily.

To support compliance, Bulgarian authorities have issued two sets of guidelines:

• Guidelines on dual price display and cash payments:

• Reminding businesses that during the dual-display-of-prices period selling prices must be shown simultaneously in euro and leva unless exemptions apply.
• Clarifying how the amounts and the currency symbols must be indicated to maintain compliance.
• Confirming that even exempted businesses (e.g. taxicab displays) remain ultimately responsible for communicating the euro amount to the consumer by another clear and unambiguous method. Examples are provided.
• Explaining the special rules for service businesses.
• Input is provided for promotions and commercial communication and how the dual-display-of-prices obligation applies to invoices, receipts and other fiscal documents for transactions in physical stores and in electronic commerce.
• Instructing traders about the requirement to notify consumers about whether they intend to accept mixed cash payments. Giving back change and refunds are also addressed. The guidelines give scenarios of mixed cash payments and how the change is to be handled: 

SCENARIO 1

If something costs EUR 12 and the customer pays EUR 5 euro and BGN 20, the trader must give EUR 3.23 in change. If the trader does not have sufficient euro, they must give BGN 6.32.

SCENARIO 2

If the price is EUR 5.11 (BGN 10) and the customer pays BGN 20, the trader must give EUR 5.12 in change. If the trader does not have sufficient euro, they must give BGN 10.01.

• Guidelines on submission of price data

The second set of guidelines covers the transparency obligation for large retailers to submit data on individual selling prices of a list of 101 CPC-selected products (e.g. food, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, non-food items, and pharmaceuticals) to their websites and the CPC-managed public portal. Any eligible large retail chain selling one or more of the 101 products must submit data via a dedicated application programming interface (API).

The guidelines further clarify the scope of the requirements to submit data, as follows:

• Obligation period: 8 August 2025 – 8 August 2026.
• Regularity: data must be submitted daily, including on Saturdays, Sundays, and on public holidays.
• Data format: Comma Separated Values (CSV).
• Mandatory fields on submission data: store location (by EKATTE-code); name of store; name of product; product code; product category; retail price; promotion price.   
• Method of submission: application programming interface (API). The authentication requires a unique code (i.e. token) supplied to traders by the CPC.
• Daily deadlines:

• By 7:00 am – publication of price information on the trader’s own website (for consumers) and submission of the same information to the CPC portal (for aggregation by the CPC).
• By 12:00 am – traders have the option to submit the data to the CPC no later than 12 noon on the day of publication.
• Upon expiry of the deadline, the data for that day cannot be added or updated in the system of the CPC portal.
• Failure to meet the deadlines may be considered a violation of IERBA requirements.

Taking proactive steps now will not only meet regulatory requirements but also strengthen consumer confidence as Bulgaria moves toward adopting the euro.