The Court Decides whether the Political Party “Vazrazhdane” Deserves a Fine for Disclosing Personal Data
On 26 February, 2025 a panel of the Sofia City Administrative Court will examine whether the political party “Vazrazhdane” should be sanctioned for a violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), adopted by the European Parliament and the Council and in force for all Member States of the European Union, including Bulgaria. The complaint was filed by 22 representatives of civil society organizations whose personal identification numbers (EGNs) were deliberately published in a post on the political party’s website.
Information about the upcoming court hearing comes together with the news that on 5 February 2025 the National Assembly rejected a proposal by Member of Parliament Delyan Peevski to establish a temporary committee to “investigate” the activities of the foundations of George Soros and his son Alexander. The initiative of the MP, who is included in the global Magnitsky list and is the leader of the breakaway formation “DPS–New Beginning,” who until recently presented himself as pro-Euro-Atlantic, in fact does not deviate from the line of his former media empire, which between 2016 and 2018 circulated articles and booklets attacking active participants in public life advocating for democratization and judicial reform. Then, as now, those calling for transparency in governance, protection of fundamental rights, reforms in various sectors, the fight against corruption, and fair distribution of public funds were disparaged with labels such as “grant-eaters,” “Sorosoids,” and “American funding.”
The growing wave of attacks against people’s private sphere and personal data is a cause for concern against the backdrop of high European standards for personal data protection.
Recently, on 28 January, Europe marked Data Protection Day. On this date in 1981, the first internationally legally binding instrument in this field was adopted—Convention No. 108 of the Council of Europe for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data.
On this date, the Access to Information Programme and Internet Society - Bulgaria regularly award the anti-award “Big Brother,” represented by a military boot crushing a human head—a symbol of the dominance of the despotic state over the individual and the restriction of their rights and freedoms. The anti-award takes its name from George Orwell’s novel 1984 and is presented in a number of democratic societies. It represents an assessment of the actions of institutions, authorities, organizations, and companies that violate the right to protection of personal data and private life.
In 2023, the authoritative jury awarded the “Big Brother” anti-award to the party “Vazrazhdane” for publicly disclosing on the party’s website personal data—EGNs and names—of more than 800 citizens, with the aim of stigmatizing them as “American spies.”
In connection with the disclosed EGNs, with the assistance of AIP, a complaint was filed with the Commission for Personal Data Protection (CPDP) by 22 of the affected citizens. In December 2024, the CPDP found a violation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation committed by the party “Vazrazhdane”. However, it refused to impose a sanction for the act, which raises doubts as to whether a real obstacle is being placed before such violations of the law, which take us back to the times of Nazism and communism.
AIP, together with partner organizations and representatives of civil society, strongly criticizes the ongoing attempts by the far-right formation to push for the adoption of a Foreign Agents Act. The wave of such legislative initiatives blows in from the northeast, has engulfed much of the states that made up the former Soviet Union, and hangs threateningly over Eastern and Central Europe.
At the end of 2024, similar threats by those in power to restrict citizens’ rights and freedoms appeared in a more presentable, but no less dangerous, form—as a concept for regulating lobbying. AIP, together with partner organizations, presented a critical opinion on the concept.
In our view, as we have stated in the recommendations of the 2024 Report on the State of Access to Information, the necessary transparency of the decision-making process should be achieved by increasing the transparency of institutions and of the meetings and contacts of senior officials, rather than by creating additional obligations for citizens and organizations that meet with them.
Thus, what matters for the consolidation of the protection of fundamental rights and democracy is both the decision of the administrative court in the case concerning the political party “Vazrazhdane” and the real action of the government and parliament with regard to draft laws being developed there which ostensibly aim to protect the public interest, but in reality are a manifestation of intolerance and the incitement of hostility in society.
