The Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC) has submitted a comprehensive package of 19 structural and legislative proposals to the executive and legislative branches. This unified framework aims to correct severe structural deformations across the domestic food supply chain, transitioning the state away from short-term crisis reactions toward long-term risk management.
While public anxiety regarding food prices has intensified following Bulgaria’s adoption of the euro, the CPC’s extensive market analysis indicates that currency transition is not the root cause of inflation. Instead, the market suffers from a decaying domestic production base, unfair retail trading margins, and fragmented supply chains dominated by middlemen. Rejecting artificial price caps, the state is shifting its strategy toward a transparent, data-driven market architecture.
The 19 Specific Measures
I. Management, Coordination, and Control
- 1. Action Plan for the Food Sector: Implementing a comprehensive framework focused on system-wide risk management.
- 2. Central Traceability Registry: A permanent digital infrastructure tracing products from wholesale entry to retail checkout.
- 3. National Food Observatory: A public analytical platform utilizing aggregated data to pinpoint where unfair price hikes occur.
- 4. Regulating “Shrinkflation”: Amending consumer laws to mandate 60-day shelf labels when an item’s volume drops but its unit price increases.
- 5. Rigid Quality and Origin Control: Empowering food safety authorities to actively police product fraud and misleading origin labels.
- 6. Public Food Procurement Reform: Transitioning institutional tenders away from a strict “lowest price” baseline toward regional freshness and quality.
- 7. Code of Good Pricing Practices: Establishing a voluntary framework to clarify pricing logic without risking anti-competitive collusion.
II. Structural Strengthening of Production and Supply Chains
- 8. Output-Oriented Subsidies: Tying agricultural aid to proven production volumes and quality, rather than land size alone.
- 9. Support for Cooperative Partnerships: Streamlining legal hurdles to help small-scale producers aggregate output and gain market leverage.
- 10. Short Supply Chains and Regional Food Hubs: Funding cold storage, sorting, and packaging facilities to bypass predatory middlemen.
- 11. Targeted Relief for Underdeveloped Regions: Deploying mobile farmers’ markets into commercially isolated, low-income territories.
- 12. Restoring Irrigated Infrastructure: Modernizing the national water network with automated technologies to combat climate and drought risks.
- 13. Revitalizing Domestic Seed Production: Boosting development of climate-resilient Bulgarian seed varieties to reduce reliance on imports.
- 14. Introduction of a VAT Grouping Regime: Allowing integrated cooperatives to register as a single tax entity to eliminate administrative friction.
III. Special Measures for Sensitive Sub-Sectors
- 15. National “Milk and Dairy Products” Program: Emergency interventions to halt a catastrophic approximately 66% drop in dairy farms (2020–2025) by mandating stable contract frameworks.
- 16. National “Fruits and Vegetables” Program: A dedicated protocol safeguarding highly perishable seasonal crops through cold-chain integration.
IV. Unfair Trading Practices and Competition
- 17. Strict Enforcement Against UTPs: Actively penalizing large retail networks that abuse buyer power through delayed payments or forced discounts.
- 18. Monitoring Retail Private Labels: Ensuring supermarket “house brands” are not used to squeeze farmer margins or clone proprietary recipes.
V. National Security Integration
- 19. Strategic Food Security Alignment: Updating the National Security Strategy to define food self-sufficiency as a vital component of state stability.
Legal Mandate: Under the Law on Protection of Competition, executive authorities must now notify the CPC of specific implementation timelines. The antitrust watchdog warns it will immediately launch new proceedings if retail networks attempt to bypass these transparency benchmarks.
