The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled today on a case initiated by the European Commission against Bulgaria for failing to fulfil its obligations under the Habitats Directive.

The case was initiated in early 2022 and in its application the European Commission asked the CJEU to find that Bulgaria had failed to designate 194 out of the 229 sites of Community importance (Natura 2000 sites in Bulgaria) as Special Areas of Conservation in time. The Commission also alleged that Bulgaria has systematically and persistently failed to fulfil its obligation to set detailed conservation objectives specific to the sites, as well as the obligation to set the necessary conservation measures to meet the ecological requirements of the natural habitat types, and that it has failed to transpose a provision of the Habitats Directive correctly into national law.

In today's ruling, the CJEU accepted only one of the Commission's four claims - concerning the designation of protected areas within the required timeframe - while rejecting the other three.

The process of declaring protected areas has not been interrupted, including during the proceedings, and 188 of the 194 protected areas referred to in the judgment have now been declared. By the end of June, orders for the designation of 5 more protected areas for which the public access period has expired are to be issued.

Within the next month (on 17 July 2024) the public consultation period for the draft order for the last of the protected areas subject to the court decision will expire and the order for its designation will be issued as soon as possible.

Bulgaria will thus fully comply with the Court's ruling.

The ruling is available on the CJEU website:

https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=287302&pageIndex=0&doclang=BG&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6064115