2024

Bulgaria remains on the Watch List in 2024. Bulgaria has been a safe haven for online piracy but, in 2023, took an important step to address deficiencies in its investigation and prosecution of online piracy cases by passing the Act Amending and Supplementing the Criminal Code, which is intended to improve the investigation and prosecution of online piracy cases. The Act makes it a crime to create conditions for online piracy through the development and maintenance of websites and applications for the online exchange of pirated content. Since the passage of the Act in August 2023, Bulgaria has not yet prosecuted anyone responsible for the online piracy sites that are hosted or operated from within the country, and the United States is monitoring developments. Although Bulgaria raised the maximum sentence for certain intellectual property (IP) crimes from five years to six (under Bulgarian law, certain investigative techniques such as subpoenas and search warrants can only be used to investigate crimes with a maximum sentence of six or more years) and also created a new cybercrime department within the National Investigative Service, longstanding IP enforcement concerns remain. These include inadequate prosecution efforts, lengthy and inefficient procedures, and the lack of the imposition of deterrent criminal penalties despite the availability of such penalties. The United States looks forward to continuing to work with Bulgaria to address these IP concerns.