Bulgaria’s parliament voted yesterday to close down duty-free shops and petrol stations along its border with Serbia, Turkey and Macedonia, pinpointed by the EU as key corruption and smuggling centres.

Outlets on its border with the three non-EU states will be shut down within a month of the law’s entering into force.

Bulgaria closed all duty-free shops on the border with Romania and Greece when it joined the European Union in 2007 but failed to do the same on the border with its non-EU neighbours on three previous attempts.

This time, the budgetary committee in parliament proposed again to keep them open, while obliging them to sell goods and petrol with VAT and excise taxes added.

But parliament unanimously rejected the proposal, following mounting pressure from the EU and the United States to close the outlets.

US Ambassador to Bulgaria John Beyrle had hit out at the proposal recently on national television.

“Several months ago the government said quite clearly that these duty-free outlets will be shut. Now, one is wondering who is in power, the government or these well-protected businessmen who want to set the rules,” he said.

A recent report by the Sofia-based think-tank Centre for the Study of Democracy said: “Duty-free trade in Bulgaria is in the hands of a few powerful figures closely connected to top government institutions and party leaders.”

The shops’ owners threatened Thursday to sue the government for losses of some 450m leva ($360m).

Official data show that some 320 million litres of diesel, 53 million litres of petrol and 5,000 tonnes of cigarettes were sold in the shops in 2006, AFP reported.

But a February 4 European Commission report found the outlets were “a focal point for local corruption and organised crime,” noting that they “have seen a substantial increase in turnover during 2007.”

The Bulgarian association of fuel distributors also claimed recently that “the fuel sold in border duty-free stations never leaves Bulgaria but is sold on the internal market.”