Ten months after the first driving licence test for foreigners was organised in Bulgaria, the regulations continue to pose serious challenges for driving schools and students. PETAR KOSTADINOV relates his experience of attending a driving test, organised by Rossen 85 driving school, on February 25 in Sofia.

Everybody who has lived abroad knows that the language barrier is a vital hurdle to cross to adapt and assimilate faster. This is all the more daunting if the foreign country is Bulgaria, with a Cyrillic alphabet far removed from Western European languages.

Driving a car is now integral to any social and business life. Bulgaria is no exception. Most expats come to Bulgaria as business people for a certain period of time and driving is often part of their professional obligations. Most motorists, if not all, possess driving licences issued by their home countries and presume that Bulgaria recognises this accreditation.

After January 1 2007, when Bulgaria joined the European Union, this question was resolved for many foreign nationals living and working in Bulgaria. All EU driving licences are now recognised by Bulgaria with the exception of those issued in the UK. So all nationals from the UK and the rest of the world now have have two choices: they can either apply for a Bulgarian driving licence or, if their home country has ratified the 1968 Vienna convention on road traffic rules, they can use a driving licence from their own country for up to one year from their arrival in Bulgaria. Then the foreigner must apply for a Bulgarian licence.

The first option

As of May 2007 foreigners in Bulgaria were able to take a Bulgarian driving test. The course is divided into two parts: theory and practice. After the theory section, the examinee has to take a multiple-choice test. If the student passes this successfully he or she is asked to drive for 15 minutes in the presence of the driving instructor and a supervisor from the Transport Ministry. The law stipulates that 40 hours of theory learning and 30 hours of driving learning are required beforehand.

This is the procedure, at least in theory, for Bulgarians and foreigners. The ministry has now translated the exam papers into English, the most widely used foreign language. But provision was also made for a translation into German if the need arises.

“Authorities should do more to help driving schools,” Guy Ishikawa, a Brazilian national, told The Sofia Echo while waiting to take the test at the Rossen 85 driving school. “The authorities fail to provide proper training materials and the translation does not seem very professional,” he said.

Hristo Hristov, a driving instructor at the school, agrees with Ishikawa. “I’ve been a driving instructor since 1992. I’ve lived for five years in the UK and know how certain expressions vary markedly in UK and American English. The ministry has disregarded this, so I have to explain some of the text to examinees depending on their country of origin.”

The standard of translation, however, is not the biggest problem, according to Krassimir Georgiev, head of Rossen 85 and chairman of the Association for qualification of motorists in Bulgaria.

“Test papers are translated into English, but there are no training materials in English that students can use. We have to come up with our own manuals in English that we give to students to enable them to gauge likely questions at the test. But it’s absurd. We are not a publishing house. And the materials we give them are only in text form without proper illustrations to help them visualise conditions on the road.”

Such illustrations are part of the test papers but foreign students only see them on the day of their test. Bulgarians, by contrast, have more than enough materials to prepare for the test. So it’s hardly surprising that most foreigners fail the first time simply because they have never seen what the test papers look like.

“Not giving foreigners proper training materials is a form of discrimination,” Georgiev said. “We have asked the authorities to change this; we have sent letters but nothing has happened so far.”

Significantly, the law on traffic rules was last amended in July 2007. The translation of the test papers was finalised two months before that and has never been updated since, contrary to the situation with exam papers for Bulgarians. “Hence Bulgarians are trained according to the new regulations while foreigners are taught with the old ones,” Georgiev said.

Georgiev believes that cost constraints account for the lack of training materials in English. “It simply isn’t financially feasible for a publishing house to print training materials for foreigners. It appears that the ministry has the same view on the subject. Either way, it’s very difficult for us to train them properly.”

Even if you manage to take the test as Ishikawa did, another bureaucratic challenge looms, one that could convince you to abandon the quest for a Bulgarian licence. Foreigners, just like Bulgarians, need to present an array of documents to gain their licence. These include: a photograph, a health certificate, a certificate for successfully undertaking a half-day course in medical assistance at the Bulgarian Red Cross (thankfully this is in English), a certificate for passing the driving test (both in theory and practice) and, last but not least, a diploma of education (high-school, college or university).

This last provision is another potential obstacle. “The law just says a candidate must have a diploma of education, nothing more,” Georgiev said. “It does not stipulate anything about having to translate the diploma or have it legalised.” So people are allowed to take the course and the subsequent test. But when their documents are sent to the Traffic Police, the body that actually issues the licence, they are asked to have their diploma legalised. Sometimes the foreigner does not have his diploma with him, as was the case with US national Jack Binns who commented that “if they twist my arm and ask for a diploma I’ll have to call my school back home”.

“It appears that no one has cared to co-ordinate the various regulations applied by different institutions,” Georgiev says. “And this is a provision that has been in force as of January 15 this year.”

Dimitar Cholakov, head of the Sofia branch of the State Motor Vehicle Inspectorate (SMVI), the body that supervises the examination process, has little sympathy for foreigners dealing with red tape. Cholakov personally attended the exam on February 25. “The SMVI is just following regulations. No one has asked us when the procedure was discussed. I can say that the procedure for issuing foreigners with a driving licence, once they have passed the test, should take no more than five working days. It’s up to the foreigner to present all the documents and send them to the Traffic Police.” According to Georgiev, however, waiting for the diploma to arrive and be legalised could take more than one month. During this time foreigners cannot drive even if they passed all their exams. “We’re not used to issuing candidate motorists with temporary driving licences. They have to wait until the Traffic Police issue them with the licence itself,” Cholakov said.

“It is another absurd rule,” Georgiev said. “Surely embassies should be allowed to issue foreigners with some kind of document stating they have a diploma to expedite the process,” he said. Again the ministry appears not to have heeded Georgiev’s calls.

The criteria the ministry has set for driving schools is also controversial.

“The law says that during the exam there should be an interpreter present. But it doesn’t stipulate that the driving instructor who trains foreigners should speak English,” Georgiev says. So, in theory, a foreigner can find he is paying a driving instructor who only speaks Bulgarian and still take the lessons. “It’s possible and we have heard of such cases. Unfortunately, this means that the foreigners were simply issued with a document that they have passed the course. Then they invariably fail the exam,” Hristov said. “It’s not their fault because, unfortunately, some driving instructors make promises to examinees to their clients, take their money and paint a false picture,” he said. “Then they come to us because we provide all services in English,” Georgiev said.

So, according to the ministry, you don’t have to speak or understand the language to learn all road signs. Communication between the instructor and the student is unimportant because the law does not oblige the instructor to speak English provided an interpreter is in the vehicle.
“This is not serious,” Hristov said. “You can’t teach someone by just using words like ‘left, right, stop and go’. The situation on the road changes every second and you can’t wait for the interpreter to translate. Furthermore, you have to be able to explain to the student the background to an incident on the road. Training in general hinges on the instructor having good communication skills.”
 

The second route
The law does allow something that could best be described as “a circumvention of the rules”. A non-EU national can drive around Bulgaria with his or her driving licence, issued by the foreigner’s home country, for up to one year from the foreigner’s entry in Bulgaria. To avoid taking the test in Bulgaria, and if the foreigner plans to stay longer than one year here, he could make a short trip to a neighbouring country and return again. This will provide for another year of driving legally in Bulgaria with a non-Bulgarian driving licence. “It is a perfectly legitimate option and it is not about breaking rules or trying to avoid them,” Hristov said. “But people should know they they should not simply cross the border and return within a few hours. They should wait for the shift to change at the border checkpoint so that it is not glaringly obvious that they’ve spent just an hour outside Bulgaria,” advises Hristov. Although a trip to Thessaloniki, Ohrid or Istanbul is always enjoyable, this “route” is time and money consuming. Unfortunately, if you want your car to be properly insured, you’ll definitely need a Bulgarian driving licence, as was the case with Jack Binns.