Bulgaria's Broadcast Watchdog Has Interim Head after TV License Row

Mariya Stoyanova, a member of the Council of Electronic Media (CEM), will be the Bulgarian regulator's chair ad interim, the council has decided.

Stoyanova will replace Georgi Lozanov, who resigned in February, a month before his term of office expired, saying he did not want to be involved in the licensing of a TV station.

Stoyanova, who officially representas Bulgaria in the EUropean Regulators Group for Audiovisual Services (ERGA), has been part of CEM since 2012.

Prior to that she had worked as a journalist since 1995, having also been the public broadcaster BNT's correspondent in Germany from 2004 to her CEM appointment.

Her experience also includes a year at the German Bundestag, where she worked as an assistant to to German politicians between 2000 and 2001, and an PR office between 2001 and 2003.

Lozanov stepped down on February 25, saying there was no legal ground to turn down a TV license request from controversial PIK.bg agency, but he could avoid being part of the process by pulling out of the council.

PIK.bg is thought to have ties to Delyan Peevski, a controversial MP and alleged media mogul whose appointment to the national security body DANS sparked nationwide protests in 2013. For years, it had been used by Peevski to deliver statements by the public before he also started his interactions with other media outlets.

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