These are some of the top headlines in Bulgarian newspapers on May 7 2008. The Sofia Echo has not verified these stories and cannot vouch for their accuracy.

Politics

- After freezing some of its pre-accession funding for Bulgaria, the European Commission (EC) kept on criticising the country in the field of environment protection, Dnevnik daily said. The EC launched infringement procedures because of Bulgaria’s incorrect implementation of the directive on environment and warned the country for discrimination in the taxation of dividends.

- Chief Directorate for Combating organised Crime would be seriously re-organised and a new body to perform the same function would be set up, according to Dnevnik. Use of special intelligence methods would be restricted to this new agency, which will remain under the umbrella of the Interior Ministry.

- The Interior Ministry would have to count the criminal groups in the country, to draw new maps of the cities where they are active and after analysing the results, to decide which regional bodies of the Chief Directorate for Combating organised Crime should be closed, Monitor daily said. This would be one of the first steps of the new Interior Minister Mihail Mikov to reform the ministry.

Society

- Only two of the new ministers would be checked for ties to the communist-era secret services, the head of commission for declassification of the archives Evtim Kostadinov told Sega daily. The ministers in question were Defence Minister Nikolai Tsonev and Agriculture and Food Minister Valeri Tsvetanov. The other three ministers had already been checked.

Economy

- Bankruptcy trustees appointed by a court last week are expected to take over the administration of Kremikovtzi steel mill on May 7, Dnevnik said, quoted an unnamed source in the management of the steelworks.