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Bulgaria president vetoes cash-for-citizenship law

06 December 2012, 14:38 CET
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(SOFIA) - Bulgaria's president on Thursday vetoed parts of a new law offering citizenship to anyone investing one million leva (511,000 euros, $668,000) into the EU country's ailing economy.

"The assessment whether to grant citizenship or not cannot be based on financial arguments," Rosen Plevneliev said in a statement.

"This approach does not take into account the essence of citizenship as a political and legal tie of the person with the state (...) from which ensue a series of rights and obligations," he said.

"Bulgarian citizenship now means EU citizenship."

The changes approved last week by parliament are an attempt by the government to attract sorely needed foreign investment, which slumped from 6.55 billion euros in 2008 to 1.75 billion euros in 2011.

Bulgarian citizens are free to travel in the visa-free European Schengen area and to work in a number of sectors in western Europe, even though Bulgaria is not a member of the 26-nation zone.

The proposed changes offer citizenship to anyone who has been a permanent resident for at least a year and has invested at least one million leva in a company involved in a large investment project.

The changes to the Investment Incentives Law also grant permanent residency to anyone investing as a partner or a shareholder at least four million leva into a Bulgarian company which in turn invests in the economy and creates at least 50 jobs.

Plevneliev criticised these requirements on Thursday as "unnecessarily heightened."

The law now goes back to parliament but Plevneliev, who comes from right-wing Prime Minister Boyko Borisov's party, does not have the right to a second veto.

Former communist Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007 as its poorest member, and is not a member of the eurozone.


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