Amendments to Bulgaria’s Data Protection Law, passed on Thursday without debate in parliament, limit freedom of expression and may result in fresh pressures on the media, the Association of Bulgarian Journalists, AEJ-Bulgaria, warned on 24 January.

The head of the AIP, lawyer Alexander Kashamov, said such rules are open to interpretation, subjective and may put undue pressure on reporters.

On January 16, in a statement issued by AIP, he wrote: “It turns out that the freedom of expression is an exception to the protection of private data principle”.

The Personal Data Protection Committee will gain the authority to scrutinize whether each individual publication “has lawfully administered data for journalistic purposes”, he noted.

The amendments have drawn criticism from media experts and lawyers since they were introduced over the summer.

The whole artcle by Martin Dimitrov is available at BalkanInsight