Bulgarian producers of wind and solar power have attacked the new 20% fee of their revenues, demanding that the president impose a veto on it.

Bulgaria's parliament voted on Thursday to impose a 20% charge on income from wind and solar power installations next year, saying this is a shortcut to keeping down electricity bills.

The vote came in defiance of renewable energy producers, who have staged numerous protests against the proposed tax.

They have complained that many of them had developed their businesses through loans from banks and the imposition of such a tax on their turnover would substantially complicate their situation.

In a media statement, the Bulgarian Photovoltaic Association (BPVA) defined the decision for the new tax as scandalous, opaque, discriminatory, and illegal.

Industry representatives insisted that the measure would discourage foreign and local investors from the most successful sector of the Bulgarian economy which had absorbed over EUR 4 B of investments and created thousands of jobs.

Nikola Nikolov from the BPVA underscored that the tax was unconstitutional and the state offered no service in exchange for it.

In an interview for the Bulgarian National Radio, Ruslan Stefanov from the Center for the Study of Democracy argued that the measure would trigger a wave of bankruptcy of renewable energy companies and referred to the proposal as an example of opaque governance.

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