site.btaBulgarian Camper Society, Regional Development Ministry Clash over Draft Ordinance on Camping

The Bulgarian Camper Society (BCS) and the Regional Development Ministry Tuesday crossed swords over a draft ordinance on camping. BSC said in a statement received at BTA that the caretaker government is trying to ban camping rather than regulate it. The Ministry said these were groundless accusations and told BTA that the proposed regulation seeks to meet a societal need to designate locations for temporary placement of tents, campers and trailers in zones A and B on the coast outside the territory of beaches, sand dunes and graded camp sites.

What the Camping Society said

BCS said that the Regional Development Ministry is making another covert attempt to bring back an old version of the regulation to the Spatial Development of the Black Sea Coast Act, which indirectly banned camping in Bulgaria. The caretaker cabinet of Dimitar Glavchev "blatantly ignored the last revision of the ordinance during the Nikolay Denkov government, which regulates and does not create prerequisites for a ban on camping. According to BCS, there were over 600 negative opinions received during a public consultation for the ordinance when it was first proposed, because of which it was scrapped and a new one was adopted in principle with only final technical details remaining to be sorted out.

BCS suspect the authorities of lobbyism and say that the proposed ordinance caters to those who want to cement the coast.

The organization declared protest readiness and informed that it will not participate uninvited in the meeting of a task force on the matter expected to be held July 24 at the ministry.

The BCS is not included in the work on the draft ordinance.

The Regional Development Ministry explained that the organization was not part of the work group even under the Denkov government.

What the Ministry said

According to the Regional Development Ministry, the draft regulation seeks to meet a societal need to designate locations for temporary placement of tents, campers and trailers in zones A and B on the coast outside the territory of beaches, sand dunes and graded camp sites, and set out the requirements for waste collection and disposal, placement of portable public toilets, designation of campfire spots, minimum health, hygiene and fire safety standards, as well as measures for environmental protection.

Once the draft document is fully prepared, it will be put up for public consultation and the government will hear the proposals and opinion of people and organizations.

To solve the problems with camping tourism in Bulgaria, it is essential that the Tourism Ministry prepare a national strategy and set strategic guidelines, after which the Tourism act, the Black Sea Spatial Development Act and other legislation will be revised accordingly, and regulate what is widely referred to "free camping".

What are the problems

The problems that the existing ordinance on camping fails to address include violations of the restrictions in protected areas, densely populated illegal camp sites, waste collection and the cost of the local authorities related to camping on the Black Sea coast, the BCS said. They say that the municipality are not offered incentives to set up camping sites.