The organization of the early general elections on 26 March is given extensive coverage by today’s papers. “Central Election Commission (CEC) must provide voting machines for each of the 12,400 polling stations in the country at the upcoming early parliamentary elections. The Supreme Administrative Court overturned the CEC’s decision of 27 January to supply no more than 500 polling stations with voting machines,” writes Capital Daily. The court ruling comes after former Reformist Bloc MPs Petar Slavov and Martin Dimitrov referred the CEC’s decision to the Supreme Administrative Court and warned that it could give grounds for contesting the election results, Trud writes. The Commission defended their decision in court with the motive that nowhere in the Electoral Code is there any text that says there has to be a voting machine in every single polling station, what it says is that there have to be machines wherever that is possible, Standard writes. Eventually, the CEC stated it would comply with the court decision even though there are a great many difficulties that will have to be surmounted. “Most of them are connected with the short time span in which polling stations have to be provided with voting machines. There are polling stations where that would be impossible, like mobile polling stations or the polling stations abroad,” says CEC spokesman Tsvetozar Tomov.

Duma writes that the caretaker cabinet will comply with the ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court and will correct the cost estimate it has already approved. The Gerdzhikov cabinet had approved the allocation of around 15 million euro for the early election. According to experts, however, buying or renting voting machines will double the cost of holding the early elections, Capital calculates. Trud notes that the voting machines will cost an additional 15 million euro. The members of the polling stationcommissions are yet to be trained how to work them. On the plus side, at the upcoming early elections each voter will be able to choose whether to cast a paper ballot or use a voting machine, Standard writes.

Out of all EU members, Bulgaria is the country with the highest percentage of people who have never used the Internet (33 percent), indicate data from a Eurostat analysis for 2016, quoted by Capital Daily. For the rest of the EU, this percentage is 14. The survey is based on information coming from the EU members, plus Macedonia, Norway and Turkey.

Every year, around 62,000 opt for wine and gourmet tourism in Bulgaria, Monitor writes, citing Rumen Draganov, Director of the Institute for Analysis and Assessment in Tourism. Of them, around 55,000 are Bulgarian, the remaining 7,000 are foreign nationals, coming mostly from Great Britain, Germany, the Scandinavian countries and Russia. Out of Bulgaria’s neighbours, the greatest number of tourists coming to this country to wine and dine are from Greece, Serbia and Macedonia. There are 143 wine cellars with wine tasting rooms in the country and more than 50 chateaux – small hotels with wine complexes.

Compiled by Miglena Ivanova

English version: Milena Daynova