Another attempt to solve the problem of illegal construction of highways and other public facilities was subjected to devastating criticism. Many critical opinions have been received on the changes introduced by the cabinet to the Parliament in the Law on Territorial Planning (ZUT). Even in positions where the idea of rescuing these public investments is accepted in principle, a number of objections have been raised about the way in which this is done. Despite the many questions, the project passed the first reading in the relevant regional committee and is expected to see the first reading in the hall.
This is the second attempt to legalize the illegal construction of highways and other technical facilities, after an attempt in this direction was also made by the official cabinet with Minister Ivan Shishkov. According to the new amendments proposed by the Denkov cabinet, 7 groups of technical constructions, public property of the state and municipalities, will be able to be legalized or completed, even though they were started without construction documents and are illegal. This will be allowed in two cases – if the constructions were admissible according to the rules in force at the time of their commencement or if they cover the current regulations. In order to reach the legalization of such an object, a series of procedures are foreseen – application for the relevant constructions, on-site inspection by DNSK, issuance of a finding report and a subsequent procedure for the supply of various documents in order to issue a certificate of suitability for operation. According to the reasons for the draft law, the removal of these objects is not expedient and economically justified, because they were both built with public funds and are intended to meet public needs. It is envisaged that the amnesty rule will apply only to elements of the technical infrastructure – roads and their facilities, transmission and distribution lines, hydromelioration networks, dams, air navigation service facilities.
The application of the amnesty procedure only to objects, public state and municipal property, is rejected in almost all opinions as contradicting the Constitution and privileging only two of the forms of property – public state and public municipal. This creates inequality between public and private property, allowing the state and municipalities to violate the law, while private investors are left with cumbersome and expensive procedures, the opinion of the Chamber of Architects in Bulgaria points out. The KAB also notes that the draft law purposefully avoids mentioning the concept of illegal, and even attempts to claim that the introduced changes fill a legal gap. “The real reason for the introduced draft law is the illegally constructed elements of the public infrastructure of great public importance (republican roads, railway lines, dams) established by the National Civil Society Committee – public state property, which is kept silent in the reasons. The proposed provision unnecessarily covers a large range of constructions, which diverts attention from the actual reason for its creation. Its introduction in this form will represent a brutal breakthrough in decades-established rules for illegal construction and a contradiction with the basic principles of the rule of law,” the architects’ opinion states.
The admission of a legalization procedure only for objects, public state and public municipal property, has been criticized in many of the other opinions, including by the National Association of Municipalities in Bulgaria. “In order to prevent unequal treatment of objects by type and ownership, we recommend considering the possibility of including a legal basis for issuing certificates of suitability for all types of constructions built without construction documents until the law comes into force,” wrote the NSORB . There are also criticisms of the unconstitutionality of the texts in other opinions.
The very technology of legalizing these constructions has caused many objections. Both builders and architects point out that completely new concepts and types of documents are being created, which will lead to the need to change many texts in the by-laws. Even without these changes, these are one of the most complicated legal and bureaucratic procedures, various interested parties point out.
In many of the positions, the risk that the adoption of such texts will lead to mass non-compliance with the rules by public contractors of technical infrastructure is also pointed out in the future. Various expert organizations have insisted that if such texts are adopted, they should have the character of extraordinary legislation and not of general rules.
“Since we are talking about objects of high importance, i.e. very serious violations of the law and deviations from the fundamental principles of the rule of law, the assessment of proportionality, justifying the application of the current law or the admission of the exception provided for by the draft, must be carried out by the National Assembly for each specific object. The draft law submitted by the Council of Ministers represents a general amnesty for a huge range of constructions in violation of the Constitution, which can only encourage such illegal behavior in the future,” the KAB points out. Individual MPs from the opposition also insisted on submitting a specific list of objects. Despite the many critical opinions, the line committee has approved the project with the argument that the texts should be cleaned between the first and second reading.
If you want to support independent and quality journalism in “Sega”,
you can donate via PayPal
2024-02-12 22:44:31
#Architects #builders #filled #cabinet #illegal #highway #amnesty
