PM Says Bulgaria to Seek Ways to Revert Ban on Sale of Farmland to Foreigners
Bulgaria’s prime minister Plamen Oresharski said the country will try to revert a recent decision by Parliament to extend an existing ban on the sale of farmland to foreigners.
"We will find a way to reconsider this bad decision, which is the result of political emotion and not of a rational approach," Oresharski told journalists in Brussels, as quoted by the Bulgarian News Agency, BTA.
On Tuesday parliament extended until January 1, 2020, the existing moratorium on the acquisition of farmland by foreign individuals and juristic persons in a 171 to 38 vote with 12 abstentions. The moratorium was due to expire on January 1, 2014. Its extension was proposed by the far-right Ataka party.
The motion was backed by 59 MPs of the Socialists' Coalition for Bulgaria, 89 of centre-right GERB party and 23 of Ataka Four MPs of Coalition for Bulgaria and 23 of the ethnic Turks' Movement for Rights and Freedom, voted against. Twelve MPs, all from Coalition for Bulgaria, abstained.