On Thursday 15 July, the European Commission decided to refer Bulgaria to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for continuously failing to connect its national trade register to the Business Registers Interconnection System (BRIS) and therefore breaching Directive 2017/1132 relating to certain aspects of company law.
The deadline for Bulgaria to connect to BRIS was 8 June 2017. “More than 4 years after that deadline and despite repeated calls by the Commission, Bulgaria is still not connected to the system”, the institution regrets in a statement.
As a result, none of the functions of BRIS are available concerning Bulgarian companies. Furthermore, without BRIS, trade registers cannot cooperate in cross-border mergers that involve Bulgarian companies or in procedures related to cross-border branches of Bulgarian companies.
On 2 July 2020, the European Commission sent a letter of formal notice to Bulgaria. This was followed by a reasoned opinion on 18 February 2021. Since the country has not taken any satisfactory action, the Commission has decided to move to the next stage of the infringement proceedings and refer the case to the CJEU. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)