At its plenary sitting on January 24, the National Assembly closed adoption of the Animal Protection Act.

The new legislation does not provide solutions for reducing mass dog and cat breeding and abandonment, i. e. information-education programmes and low-cost sterilization programmes. Thus most of the obligations according to Art. 12 and Art. 14 of the European Council's Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals were broken by Bulgaria.

No rule in cases of lost animals found by people.

A regime of public access to the animal shelters is not provided

No clear rules of animal collection and transportation.

There are enforced only three options to proceed with unwanted animals - sterilizing and releasing them to roam, or collecting them in life-long shelters outside cities and towns.

There is provided separate registration of unowned animals - in Municipal registers only.

A regime of public access to the animal registers is not provided.

No clear obligations of National Veterinary Service and Ministry of Interior to control organized activities as collecting, transporting, sheltering and releasing animals.

Key supporters of this uncompleted Act were Sofia Mayor Boyko Borissov (CEDB/GERB Party), former Agriculture Minister Ventzislav Varbanov MP (BAPU-PU/BZNS-NS Party), former Enviroment Minister Evdokia Maneva MP (DSB Party) and National Veterinary Service Deputy Director Dr Paskal Zheliazkov.

Only the Animal Programs Foundation publicly insists that corresponding erratic and uncompleted textes must be fixed by the President of the Republic in order to be considered anew by the Parliament. On January 11, 2008 AP founder Emil Kuzmanov received anonimous SMS: "Look out what you talk and what you write! We will lay wait for you and your dogs! We will cut ears!".





Emil Kuzmanov

The Animal Programs Foundation of Bulgaria

18 Yanko Sofiiski Str

1164 Sofia, Bulgaria