A draft law on improving transparency in Bulgarian media could be enacted by the end of next month.
According to Capital, a second reading of the proposed legislation, known as ‘Peevsky’s Media Law’, has been unanimously approved by the Parliamentary Committee on Culture and Media and will hopefully be voted on in the plenary next week.
The basis of the draft law is an obligation for media service providers to declare by June 30 each year the funding they received in the previous calendar year. This includes amounts, justification and who it was provided by.
The draft aw also says that a declaration will be published in a register maintained by the Ministry of Culture. In the event of a delay, failure to provide a declaration or declaration of false data, a penalty of BGN10,000-15,000 (€5,113 -7,669 ) will be imposed, rising to BGN20,000-30,000 for repeat offenders.
The draft law obliges all media service providers to declare their ownership to the Ministry of Information, as well as if the owner holds public office or has any verdicts against them.
There is in addition an obligation to declare who controls the content of the media service and if the editorial policy is different from the owner’s.
