The new concept of administrative contract introduced with the amendment of the Code of Administrative Procedure in September 2016 is likely to trigger certain concerns about its application and enforcement, particularly for all companies and entrepreneurs who work with the public administration – e.g. by participating in public tenders or by applying for EU funds. A detailed overview of the new rules and the arising risks is provided by the leading administrative law experts, Professor Lazarov and Professor Todorov, in their article published in Administrative Law Magazine, issue 3/2016. According to them, the new concept will trigger certain problems because of its ambiguity, particularly with respect to the set references to the procedure applicable to individual administrative acts and the options to be challenged in court under Chapter 10, Section 1 of the Code.
“The administrative contract concept is introduced allegedly with the purpose to set out certain general rules applicable to the management of the financing under the EU structural and investment funds, concessions, public procurement, lease and sale of state and municipal real property, public private partnership and the like, where the procedure often requires an individual administrative act to be issued to nominate a contracting partner (private party), which is then followed by a contract. However, it is not clear if all activities within the scope of the Concessions Act, the Public Procurement Act and the Public Private Partnership Act and the other special laws are equally “significant” in the meaning of the Code regarding the public interest involved. A few other laws also provide for a similar procedure (e.g. the easements granting under the Forestry Act, the lease of state property under the State Property Act, etc.), even though the underlying public interest there can rarely be deemed sufficiently “significant”. This is an example of some of the problems, which the new rules will trigger. Indeed, within the context of the existing regulatory framework, the application of the Code’s provisions on administrative contract is extremely limited. However, it remains to be seen how the special laws will integrate the new concept within their respective domains and whether the Code’s provisions will ever become operative.”
The full text of the article is available in Bulgarian on the Legal World website: http://legalworld.bg/56433.administrativniiat-dogovor-sled-vyvejdaneto-mu-v-apk.html
Source: Legal World Magazine
