Bulgaria Constitutional Court rejects challenge to camping ban
Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court said on June 16 that it has ruled against the challenge to the Black Sea Act amendments that banned tents, as well as vehicles including campers and caravans, from the country’s Black Sea dunes.
Filed in July 2019 by then-Ombudsman Maya Manolova, the challenge followed a veto by President Roumen Radev, which was overturned by the National Assembly.
The bill introduced a legal possibility to create, outside areas of the sea beaches and official campsites, areas where the temporary placement of tents, campers and caravans is permitted. It also stipulated a fine of 1000 leva (about 500 euro) for putting a tent on a dune, and 3000 leva in the case of an individual, and 5000 leva in the case of a company, for a caravan.
The amendments were criticised by the opposition socialists and Bulgarian environmental groups, who said that it failed to define properly the dunes to be covered by the ban, and also fell short in legislating against construction on dunes.
The Constitutional Court did not post its full ruling, but said that judges Grozdan Iliev and Atanas Semov had a dissenting opinion regarding the entire ruling, while judges Boris Velchev and Georgi Angelov had a separate dissenting opinion concerning part of the ruling.
(Archive photo: Fred Green/freeimages.com)
