In recent years, Bulgaria’s anti-corruption authority has repeatedly changed its institutional form. In 2023, the country adopted the Counter-Corruption Act (Закон за противодействие на корупцията), which split the former Commission for Counteracting Corruption and the Forfeiture of Illegally Acquired Assets into two separate bodies: the Commission for Counteracting Corruption (Комисия за противодействие на корупцията) and the Commission for the Forfeiture of Illegally Acquired Assets (Комисия за отнемане на незаконно придобитото имущество). The anti-corruption commission was intended to focus on counteracting corruption among persons holding public office, verifying declarations, identifying conflicts of interest, and investigating corruption offences.
However, this model was short-lived. On 28 January 2026, Bulgaria’s parliament adopted at second reading amendments to the National Audit Office Act, abolishing the Commission for Counteracting Corruption**. Its powers were redistributed among several bodies: functions related to detecting and preventing corruption were transferred to the Ministry of Interior, investigations into high-level corruption cases to investigative authorities, and matters related to corruption prevention, conflicts of interest, and verification of asset declarations to the National Audit Office.
The Act on Counteracting Corruption among Persons Holding Public Office (Закон за противодействие на корупцията сред лица, заемащи публични длъжности), published in the State Gazette (Държавен вестник) on 5 June 2026, effectively returns key anti-corruption functions to an independent authority, while changing the model for its formation.
The governing body of the Commission will now consist of five members with five-year terms of office. One member will be elected by the National Assembly, one will be appointed by the President, one each will be elected by the general meetings of the judges of the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court, and one will be elected by the Supreme Bar Council. The Chair of the Commission will be selected by lot from among its members and will rotate annually. Only Bulgarian citizens with a legal education, high professional and moral qualities, and at least ten years of professional experience may be elected to the Commission.
The election of the new members of the Commission must take place within one month of the law’s entry into force, i.e. by 5 July 2026.
The Commission will be accountable to the National Assembly: it will be required to submit a report to parliament every six months, as well as an annual report on its activities. Its oversight will cover 52 categories of persons holding public office, including the President and Vice President, members of parliament, ministers, and other public officials.
The Commission’s main areas of work will include corruption prevention, detection and investigation of corruption offences committed by persons holding public office, verification of declarations of assets and interests, and identification and resolution of conflicts of interest. The new body is therefore intended to bring together functions that, after the abolition of the previous commission, had been temporarily distributed among different authorities.
The law also regulates the transitional period. For three months after the new members of the Commission take office, the relevant functions will continue to be performed by the previously competent authorities. After that, staff of the National Audit Office units responsible for corruption prevention, the public register, and conflicts of interest must be transferred to the Commission.
Until the Commission establishes its own operational-search units, the relevant activities will continue to be carried out by the Ministry of Interior. Once such units are established, the General Directorate for Combating Organised Crime will be required to transfer to the Commission ongoing operational cases related to counteracting corruption. The State Agency for National Security, in turn, must transfer archived operational cases and related databases.
The law also provides for the development of digital infrastructure for anti-corruption control. Within two months after the new members of the Commission take office, the automated and non-automated information repositories created and used by the National Audit Office must be transferred to the Commission. In addition, the Commission must establish a unified electronic declaration system within 18 months of the law’s entry into force.
*According to the sponsors of the bill, the adoption of the law is also linked to the need to fulfil Bulgaria’s commitments in order to receive EU funds under the Recovery and Resilience Plan.
**The abolition of the commission in January 2026 was linked not only to another institutional reform, but also to criticism of the authority’s effectiveness. By that time, almost all parliamentary parties supported its closure, and one of the bills submitted for consideration explicitly stated that the commission’s performance had failed to meet public expectations. In addition, disputes persisted over the procedure for forming the commission’s leadership: in 2025, a complaint was filed with the Constitutional Court challenging the procedure for selecting members of the Commission, but the case was later dismissed after the body had been abolished. There were also concerns about the risk of politically motivated use of its powers, with critics arguing that the Commission could be used as a tool to pressure political opponents.