Bulgaria: The Court finally set a 140 km/h Maximum Speed Limit on the Highway

The Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) has finally canceled the 20-year-old legally enshrined circumstance, in which the Bulgarian regulatory framework gives different answers to the question of what is the highest speed for driving on a highway. This was reported by news.lex.bg.

In the Road Traffic Act, the limit on highways is set at 140 km/h, but according to the regulations for its implementation, it is 120 km/h.

Today (January 16), a 5-member panel of the Supreme Administrative Court confirmed the decision of the first court instance, which revokes the text of the regulations. According to the supreme judges, in the event of a conflict between two acts of different degrees, the one with a higher rank, i.e. the law, applies.

The discrepancy between the regulations and the law has been a fact since 2002, when the maximum speed for driving on a highway in the Road Traffic Act was increased from 120 km/h to 130 km/h. In 2012, it was changed to 140 km/h. The speed determined by the law is applied during traffic control.

The regulation was adopted in 1996 - three years before the current Road Traffic Act, but has not been repealed to this day. No changes were made to it for 10 years, but from 2006 to 2015 it was amended 9 times. This shows that a series of governments (it has been adopted and should therefore be repealed by a decree of the Council of Ministers) continue to recognize it as a legal act regulating road traffic.

Moreover, the Road Traffic Act itself has a special provision that stipulates that "the by-laws on the implementation of the repealed Road Traffic Act shall remain in force insofar as they do not contradict this Act".

By 2021, no one had taken the intolerable state of the highway speed limit to...