Bulgaria: repressive legislative proposals & an unstable political environment

This month, Zahari Iankov, senior legal advisor at the Bulgarian Center for Not-for-Profit Law, shares news of the situation for civic space in Bulgaria including the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Proposal and anti-LGBT legislation, both of which impact CSOs – and how CSOs in the country are responding.

Bulgaria has been in a continuous state of political crisis since 2021, unable to produce a stable government. In October 2024 parliamentary elections were held for the seventh time in the past three years. As a result, at the beginning of 2025 a government with unclear horizons was formed.

In this unstable political environment, a growing distrust in the election process is observed with the latest parliamentary elections marked by a record low voter turnout of 38.94%. Other public participation mechanisms like the CSO consultative council to the Parliament and the Civil Society Development Council to the Council of Ministers do not function on a regular basis and face great challenges to fulfil their statutory goals.

Meanwhile political actors continuously target CSOs and the concepts of human rights and international cooperation with smear campaigns and repressive legislative proposals inspired by the authoritarian practices in Russia and Hungary.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Proposal

A Russian-style FARA bill was proposed in Bulgaria for the first time by the far-right Revival Party in 2022. It proposes multiple restrictive measures such as stigmatizing labeling, banning activities, and imposing administrative burdens and censorship on organizations and individuals that have received funding (including in the form of goods or reimbursement of expenses) from abroad that cumulatively exceeds 1000 BGN (approx. 500 Euro) within a year.

The proposal of a FARA was announced in 2022 during a press conference together with a document presented as a “report to the prosecution” containing personal data of dozens of CSOs representatives (including their state issued PINs – strictly forbidden according to the Bulgarian Personal Data Protection Act) who have acquired funding from one of the biggest private donors operating in Bulgaria. Shortly afterwards the Data Protection Authority opened a case against the Revival Party; however, it took the DPA 3 years to issue a decision finding the political party in violation and it has refused to impose any sanctions.

Since 2022 the FARA was proposed 3 more times in different short-lived parliaments and was subject to 1 parliamentary commission and 2 plenary debates. Even though the Bill was not passed, it is constantly instrumentalized for the purposes of a smear campaigns against the CSOs.

Anti-LGBT legislation as a gateway to a wider attack against the civic space

In the beginning of August 2024, the Parliament adopted discriminatory amendments to the Pre-School and School Education Act, which prohibit the promotion or discussion of diverse and “non-traditional” sexual orientations or gender identities in schools. These changes were passed under a fast-track procedure without proper debate or public consultation.

In December 2024 another anti-LGBT legislative amendment, this time in the Child Protection Act, was proposed. It envisages a ban on access to and dissemination of any information related to gender identity and expression that does not conform to the view of sex as strictly biological in public places “which might be visited by children”. It also seeks to criminalize the provision of medical services related to gender transition for minors and to revoke licenses from social service providers who share such information. It has not been passed yet but has already been approved by several parliamentary commissions.

These anti-LGBT laws mirror legislations adopted in Hungary, Russia and Georgia where they have been utilized for a consequent wider crack down on CSOs and human rights. Similarly, after the adoption of the Pre-School and School Education Act in Bulgaria the far-right political actors used the occasion to promote the adoption of a FARA as a next necessary step to protect children, implicating that foreign funded CSOs are harmful to them. Furthermore, in late August a joint hearing of two parliamentary commissions was held to investigate a possible breach of the new law by CSOs researching the harassment in schools against LGBT students. This hearing was a direct attack against a couple of organizations and effectively a smear attack against the CSO sector.

Proposals of ad-hoc parliamentary commissions

In the beginning of 2025, a couple of political parties represented in Parliament proposed the creation of various ad-hoc parliamentary commissions to investigate foreign funding of CSOs. None of those proposals were approved, however they were deliberated in parliamentary plenaries during which a number of organizations were named and shamed by MPs. Concrete donors such as US and Swiss programs were also attacked as well as in typical Hungarian fashion – including George Soros whose philanthropy activities are actually next to nothing in Bulgaria since the country’s EU accession in 2007.

Reaction of the CSO sector

The intensified attacks in recent years have negatively impacted the CSOs’ work in Bulgaria by creating a chilling effect and shifting public opinion against transparent foreign funding and the role of the CSOs in decision making processes.

At the end of 2024, Bulgarian civil society started to mobilize itself in a nonformal coalition to react to the intensifying threats to civic space. Crucial initial initiatives included actions to increase the knowledge about the nature of the threats by reaching out to experts in Hungary and Georgia which have firsthand experience with similar developments and to draw into the push-back efforts influential business representatives who understand that deterioration of the civic space is a problem for the whole of society.

As a result, the FARA bill proposal in September 2024 was followed by dozens of negative responses filed in the parliaments, including a petition by more than 2000 people and organizations and a negative response from one of the biggest business associations in the country.

Since then, the nonformal coalition continues its work to counter repressive legislative measures, including carrying out positive campaigns about the role and achievements of the CSO organizations and promoting the established and existing transparency practices of the sector.

Picture by  Emer_Iglesias on Pixabay