Recognition of foreign diplomas and qualifications in Bulgaria: what the employer prepares

Education and professional qualifications obtained in a third country are recognised through the National Centre for Information and Documentation (NACID) and the competent authority for the profession concerned. The competent authority decides within 3 months on automatic recognition and within 4 months under the general system. The state fee is 25 leva for a completed stage of school education and 35 leva for a degree together with a professional qualification. Both routes and both decision periods come from the Law on the Recognition of Professional Qualifications, in force since 8 February 2008, which transposes Directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications.

The employer is not a party to the procedure, but the employer pays for the delay. When the work permit is issued and recognition has not concluded, the worker is in Bulgaria and cannot take up the post they came for.

When recognition is mandatory, and when it is not

The dividing line is whether the profession is regulated. For regulated professions, NACID treats recognition of the professional qualification as a condition for practising the profession, not only for being hired. Without a recognised document the person cannot practise, whatever their valid residence and work permit and signed employment contract say.

For unregulated professions, which cover most production and warehouse posts, recognition is not a legal condition of hiring. There the qualification document plays a different role: in part of the procedures under the Labour Migration and Labour Mobility Act, the Employment Agency requires a qualification document matching the requirements of the post. That is an evidentiary requirement inside the permit file, not recognition in the NACID sense, and the two are routinely confused.

The documents and translations actually required

The common belief is that every page of the file goes to a sworn translator and then to certification. NACID's position is narrower: certified translations are required only for the core documents, meaning the diploma, the certificate and the identity document. The transcript of grades, the curriculum and the statements of teaching hours are submitted in translation, but certification is not required for each of them.

That distinction has a price. A full pack for one candidate from Nepal or India often runs to between 40 and 60 pages, and certifying every page instead of the three core documents doubles the translation cost on every file in the cohort. Employers hiring in groups pay that mistake multiplied by the headcount.

Legalisation of the originals is a separate step, done in the country of origin before departure. A document from a state party to the 1961 Hague Convention carries an apostille, while a document from a state outside it needs full consular legalisation. A diploma issued and left behind in Kathmandu cannot be legalised from Bulgaria. If the worker has already arrived, the fallback is a relative walking it through the institutions on the ground, which adds weeks to a three or four month clock that is already running.

The application is filed by the person concerned or an authorised representative, not by the employer. That means the power of attorney is signed while the candidate is still in the country of origin, alongside the rest of the file. An employer who discovers this after arrival loses another round through a notary and a translator.

How the schedule sits against the work permit

Recognition neither pauses nor slows the work permit procedure. The two run independently, which is an advantage only if they start together. The competent authority's three month period runs alongside the two month period for the single permit for residence and work and the time to issue a type D visa. Filed in the same month, the two finish within weeks of each other. Filed in sequence, because the employer waits for the permit before starting recognition, they produce four to five months between offer and first shift.

The working rule for regulated professions is to start recognition in the same week the permit file starts, even before the candidate has signed. A fee of 25 or 35 leva is trivial next to the cost of an unfilled shift.

For unregulated posts, the qualification document belongs in the pack for the labour market test and the employer's justification, where it evidences that the candidate matches the requirements of the post. The question there is not whether NACID recognised the diploma, but whether the qualification described matches the job description the employer filed.

Recognition is a predictable procedure with published deadlines and two figure fees. The problem is almost never the procedure itself, it is the week the employer starts it. If you are preparing a cohort for regulated posts next quarter, our employer team can sort which profiles need recognition and which do not.