Section: Trade Leaders’ Guide

In 2020 we created our column " Trade Leaders’ Guide ", in which we share useful information concerning Bulgarian traders.

In this publication we acquaint you with the requirements of Regulation 2019/1150 of the European Union, which entered into force and applies from 12 July 2020.

An EU regulation means that the requirements in it directly enter into force in the legislation of the member states of the union.

As a result, the Electronic Commerce Act was amended with SN No. 96 of November 10, 2020, which led to the requirement to apply the new rules in Bulgaria as well.

These changes directly affect all B2P relations between:

• online intermediation service providers,
• online search engine providers,
• business users of such services.

Their aim is to promote fairness and transparency for business users of online intermediation services and search engines.

The rules mainly concern unfair commercial practices and out-of-court settlement of disputes. There are also requirements to the general terms and conditions of online intermediation service providers, rules and deadlines for limiting, suspending and terminating services to a given business user, and requirements related to specific contractual terms.

You can read the whole regulation here.

In Art. 11 of the regulation clarifies the requirements for the introduction of an internal system for filing complaints with online platforms. When no agreement is reached as a result of the complaint, mediation is initiated in order to seek a solution to the dispute with the help of a third, independent and impartial mediator. This requirement is regulated in Art. 12 of the regulation, which states that all companies offering online intermediation services must indicate at least 2 mediators they are willing to turn to when trying to reach an agreement.

As the mediators in NAIS ADR Center meet all the requirements set out in para. 2 of Article 12, the members of our organization can rely on us to resolve conflicts between trading partners entirely Covid-free, i.e. online in a convenient and safe environment for each of the participants.

NOTE! Only Bulgarian traders can be members of NAIS.

We invite all Bulgarian traders with online platforms and search engines that mediate other traders to reach their products and services to the end customer, to become our associate members. All you need to do is submit an application to us, which you can download here and pay an annual membership fee of BGN 200 to our bank account:

First Investment Bank

BG91FINV91501216791708 BGN

BIC: FINVBGSF

Recipient: National Association for Out-of-Court Settlements - NAIS

Upon payment of annual membership fee:

Reason: annual membership fee of…. (Company name and UIC)

Grounds: mediation procedure between… (name of the intermediary service provider) and… (name of the trader, user of the service).

Before conducting the mediation procedure itself, it is necessary to pay BGN 110. If the procedure lasts more than 2 astronomical hours, an additional BGN 80 is due for each additional hour started. How to distribute the tax between the two parties is decided in each case, according to paragraph 4 of Article 12, which states that the provider of online mediation services assumes a reasonable share of this amount, on a case-by-case basis.

You can read more details about NAIS membership in the For Traders section.

If you have questions before becoming a member, you can write to us at office@nais.bg, in our contact form, and why not in a messenger or comments on our Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

Follow our pages in LinkedIn and Facebook as well as our website NEWS page on nais.bg for the first publications in our Trade Leaders’ Guide where we will share info about best practices in the field of complaint handling and consumer conflict resolution.