The heads of Billa Bulgaria and Kaufland Bulgaria criticised inspections and fines against the big retail chains. Kaufland will appeal the decision of the Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC) in court. They spoke at the MORE THAN TRADE modern retail forum at the Grand Hotel Millennium in Sofia.

The CPC fines total nearly €76m.

"Leading experts in cartel law" have reviewed the commission's decision, Kaufland Bulgaria chief executive Mihail Petrov said. He said the company "can't wait to go to court and tear it apart with legal arguments". The chain's 8,800 employees are now worried about their jobs.

Billa Bulgaria chief executive Albena Georgieva said the unsettled business climate in Bulgaria has causes that go back further than the events of the past week. She said they also lie in how some businesses are inspected and monitored.

Showy inspections at stores create a heavy administrative burden that distorts the business model, Georgieva said. Store staff have to do paperwork on top of their main duties, so the chain cannot show well how it works.

There have been inspections and there will be more, she said. What is new is that the inspecting bodies arrive together but are poorly coordinated with each other.

Georgieva added that food supply is part of the state's security policy, and that communication between institutions and business in it is very important. Right now it is "totally broken" and helps no one. "I think that if there is more transparency, openness and less one-sidedness in looking for the moment of the show, there will be more coordination and functionality in this market," she said.

Nikolay Valkanov, chief executive of the Modern Trade Association, warned that people should be careful about reaching for easy culprits when they look for solutions to complex economic problems. The association organises the forum, now in its third edition, whose motto is "Everyone is talking. Myths versus reality".

Valkanov said this harms the image of business and undermines trust in institutions. He was referring to claims that retailers are profiteers who pile up profit at Bulgarians' expense and send it abroad. The same goes for claims that official statistics do not measure inflation correctly. Such claims give people a sense of constant lies, and when repeated thousands of times, they start to be taken as truth.

Georgieva said Billa sees no change in customer spending amid the events around the big chains.