(Adnkronos) – The new Bulgarian government of Rumen Radev, a center-left national-populist, has already begun to assert its positions in the EU Council, which, regarding policies towards the LGBT community, are characterized by marked traditionalism, with repressive traits borrowed from Viktor Orban’s Hungary.
At the Culture Council on May 11 and 12 in Brussels, ministers approved the Council’s negotiating position on the Agora Eu 2028-34 program, aimed at strengthening media, press freedom, culture, and civic participation. Bulgaria, whose new government had taken office a few days prior, attached a note to the minutes, consulted by Adnkronos, to explain its opposition: “Unfortunately,” Sofia writes in the attached note, “the Republic of Bulgaria is unable to support the adoption of the partial general approach regarding the regulation, as the current text contains concepts, such as the term ‘gender identity’, which are considered incompatible with the fundamental principles of the Bulgarian Constitution and the binary interpretation of the notion of ‘sex'”.
In 2018, the Sofia government recalls, “the Bulgarian Constitutional Court adopted a decision according to which the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention) promotes legal concepts that intend to distinguish between ‘sex’ as a biological category (women and men) and ‘gender’ as a social construct. In 2021, the Constitutional Court adopted another decision clarifying that the notion of ‘sex’ used in the Constitution can only be considered in the sense of its biological determination. The Bulgarian constitutional and legal system firmly rejects the concept of ‘gender’ as a fluid social construct and does not recognize ‘gender identity’ as a legally valid category”.
