Luben Panov

Luben is Senior Program Consultant with the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL) serving as a legal expert providing technical assistance and expert support to local partners in the areas of registration and operation of CSOs, taxation, and funding for civil society, tax incentives for donations, social contracting, state funding, CSO-government cooperation, etc. Luben has worked in a number of countries, especially in the CEE region and the former Soviet Union. He has participated in the drafting of rules for distribution of state grants in Albania, has analyzed the legal framework for CSOs in Armenia and the mechanisms for social contracting in Kazakhstan and has been involved in projects in Cyprus, Turkey and Mongolia, among others. He helped to develop the CSO Meter – a monitoring framework for the CSO environment in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. In the period 2015 – 2017 he was elected Chairperson of the Public Council of the Committee on Interaction with Civil Society and Citizen Complaints with the Bulgarian Parliament.

Prior to joining ECNL, Luben served as the first director of the Bulgarian Center for Not-for-Profit Law (BCNL) – one of the leading CSOs in the country. Luben Panov has a BA in Business Administration from the Sofia University (1997), MA in Macroeconomics from the Sofia University (1998) and an MA in Human Rights from the Central European University in Budapest (1999).