Bulgaria’s Parliament voted to impose an almost-complete ban on dunes at the country’s Black Sea coast, with exceptions that would allow building for sites of national significance, those related to national security and for essential infrastructure, The Sofia Globe wrote.

The law is among a number identified as urgent business for Parliament before it is prorogued ahead of Bulgaria’s ahead-of-term national parliamentary elections on May 12 2013. Lyuben Tatarski, head of Parliament’s committee on regional development, said that the ban would apply to zones A and B along the coastline. 

He said that the exceptions were necessary, for instance, to permit projects such as the South Stream gas pipeline to go ahead. The exception would mean that if South Stream had to go under a dune area, the law would not stop it. 

The legislation is a sequel to national controversies at the start of 2013 about building projects in ecologically sensitive dune areas at Nessebur and Irakli at the Black Sea coast. 

The construction projects resulted in large-scale public protests in several cities and a march on Parliament. Source; American Chamber of Commerce Bulgaria