Delyan Peevski

A new law that will force the country's newspapers to declare their sources of income and details about their funders, sparking fears of a witch-hunt of foreign-funded media and pressure on individual donors to smaller outlets, has been attracting criticism in Bulgaria.

Delyan Peevski of the Movement of Rights and Freedoms was the Bulgarian politician who enriched himself the most in 2017, according to the property and interests declarations published on Monday by the Commission for Illegal Assets Forfeiture, CIAF.

The international media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, RSF, in a new report published on Thursday, says investigative journalism still faces serious obstacles in Bulgaria.

The report comes just weeks after Bulgaria's parliament backed controversial amendments to print publishing legislation that obliges media outlets to reveal the sources of their income.

With 92 votes in favour, 12 against and 28 abstentions, lawmakers in Bulgaria's parliament on Wednesday, on a first reading,voted in favour of amendments to the Law for the Compulsory Depositing of Print Media.

MPs now have four weeks to potentially amend the proposal, ahead of the second reading, after which the law would be officially amended.

Bulgaria continues to drop down in the Reporters Without Borders Index of Media Freedom and is in a lower position than any other member of the European Union. Our country is now 111th, while in 2017 it was 109th.

Several important bills have to be on the agenda today, according to bTV. 

The United Patriots propose changes to the Criminal Code to criminalize radical Islam. According to them, anyone who preaches radical Islam can be punished by one to five years imprisonment and a fine of up to BGN 5000.

Exiled Bulgarian banker Tsvetan Vassilev, whose extradition from Serbia is sought by the authorities in Sofia, told BIRN that moves to nationalize the arms firm Dunarit - which has been linked to his former business empire - would be a crime.

DPS MP Delyan Peevski wrote an open letter to some media - mostly those owned by him, denying his business being related to the operations of the military-industrial complex. According to him, his name is used for false insinuations in the case of the withdrawal of the license of Dunarit and Emco.

Here is the text of Peevski's letter, without editorial intervention:

Professor of Sofia University and Associate Professor of Civil Law Christian Takov has died, his family said.

"On July 11, at age 51, Christian Takov has died. He was a person with a huge soul, heart, power and intellect, who remained unrelenting to injustice, we all who loved him are mourning, the date of the service will be specified" clarified a message from his relatives.

An independent study, presented in the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, has identified Bulgaria together with Greece, Hungary and Italy as a country at risk of concentration of media ownership and political control over editorial policy, reported bTV.

According to the authors of the study, the risk of political control over media in Bulgaria is 79%.