Cabinet-proposed amendments to the Bulgarian Citizenship Act aim to speed up application processing and reduce the possibilities for corruption, a Cabinet media statement on January 20 said.

Among the changes proposed by the Cabinet is that applications for Bulgarian citizenship based on ethnic heritage are to be processed by the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad.

The reason for this change was the an increased number of applications with falsified documents, the Cabinet media statement said.

The amendments introduce a one-year deadline for a decision on the application and specify that institutions to be involved in the decision process are the Interior Ministry and the State Agency for National Security, the statement quoted Minister without portfolio Bozhidar Dimitrov as saying.

The number of employees in the relevant government institutions would be increased with an additional 10 to 15 people, so institutions would be able to comply with the deadline, Dimitrov said.

Future applications will have to be handed in in person, either with the Justice Ministry or the diplomatic mission abroad, cutting out the current practice of middlemen, the statement said.

In recent public statements, Dimitrov had already said that the current practice of middlemen in the application process created opportunities for corruption. According to the Cabinet, a majority of the falsified or modified documents were filed by middlemen.

The amendments were expected to lead to significantly faster application processing, the Cabinet said.