site.btaEconomic Minister Cancels Appointment of 12 Trade Attaches over Faulty Competition Procedure

Caretaker Economy Minister Petko Nikolov has cancelled the appointment of 12 new trade attaches hired by the Nikolay Denkov Cabinet after a competition, Nikolov's Ministry said Monday. The caretaker Minister reasons in his order that the competition did not comply with the law. 

Nikolov told BTA that they will likely hold a new competition "with clearer rules that will allow anybody to participate while making it possible for those who are unhappy with the competition commission's actions, to challenge them in court". 

The procedure in which the 12 were elected did not allow the losing candidates to challenge the decision in court.

The procedure for filling 23 vacancies in 21 countries started in October 2023. In late March 2024, the Economy Ministry reported receiving over 180 applications for competitions for the trade attache positions and 13 of the candidates "passed the competition successfully". The successful entrants were hired for Kazakhstan (Almaty); Germany (Berlin); Portugal (Lisbon); Czech Republic (Prague); Switzerland (Bern); Algeria (Algiers), Indonesia (Jakarta); Jordan (Amman); Qatar (Doha); UAE (Dubai); USA (Washington, D.C., Cicago and Los Angeles).

Nikolov told BTA that he had received several complaints for violations of the rules (including the missing opportunity to challenge the competitions' outcome).