ISSN 1313-6496Problematic Initiatives of Bulgarian Government Touching upon the Right to Information
 Alexander Kashumov, AIP |
Alongside the natural public discontent related to the planned budget, the lack of transparency regarding the intended outcome, and the unfairness of its distribution, we should not overlook several swift blows that the governing majority has successfully delivered—or attempted to deliver—to citizens’ right to information in recent months.
Initiative to amend the Access to Public Information Act
In July and August 2025, a draft amendment to the Access to Public Information Act (APIA) was submitted for public consultation. The changes proposed by the Ministry of Electronic Governance aimed to transpose the European Union's Data Governance Act into national legislation, but some of the provisions raised concerns that they could lead to restrictive application of the APIA. A questionable provision was proposed that would introduce only some of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provisions but Art. 86 referring to the balance with access to official documents. Furthermore, repeal of one of the obligations for mandatory online publication by public bodies was proposed, and new definitions introduced thus limiting the scope of available information, such as the what does "access" mean. The Access to Information Programme (AIP) submitted a critical opinion on the draft amendments in August 2025. The ministry's leadership accepted the criticism and agreed to amend the texts. The transposition of DPA was mandatory, but despite the rush in mid summer, a check today (10 January 2026) shows that the Council of Ministers has not yet submitted a bill to parliament to amend APIA.
Blocking court cases under the Access to Public Information Act
In August 2025, a draft amendment to the Administrative Procedure Code (APC) was quietly voted on. The general bill was a compilation of a legislative initiative by the Council of Ministers from June 2025 and another one submitted by three GERB MPs six days later. Along with some positive changes such as the extension of the time-frame for administrative silent refusal appeal from one to two months, the MPs also proposed a new provision regulating legal bases for suspending administrative court proceedings. So far, this issue has been regulated by the Civil Procedure Code (CPC), to which the APC refers. The new proposed text in the APC (Article 154a) was almost a copy-paste of the CPC provision, but two new grounds for suspension were added. One of them was legitimate and concerns cases where court makes a reference for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The other ground related to cases "where an interpretative case has been brought before the Supreme Court of Cassation or the Supreme Administrative Court on a matter relevant to the dispute." Actually, this ground for suspension of a case is limited only to administrative court cases under APC and does not extend to civil court cases under the Civil Procedure Code (CPC).
It is not by coincidence that the amendment to the APC came in time to serve the suspension of some number of court cases under APIA where investigative journalists request information about the findings of the Special Public Prosecutor Ms. Taleva as regards the acting Prosecutor General Mr. Borislav Sarafov. The prehistory is that in December 2024 Mr. Sarafov asked the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) to deliver an interpretative decision on the application of APIA. The six questions he submitted suggest that important categories of documents held by Public Prosecution in the course of criminal investigations and inspections of non-criminal nature should be declared outside the scope of APIA. The questions also cover all matters related to the potential inquiries and investigations of the Special Public Prosecutor, which are obviously of high public interest.
Some administrative courts suspended in the 1st half of 2025 APIA cases where information held by public prosecution bodies was requested including documents referring to circumstances around Mr. Sarafov. The courts invoked the argument that they should wait until the interpretative case initiated by Mr. Sarafov before SAC would be decided. As seen by reviewing some interpretative cases in recent past this would take 3-4 years. However, some panels of SAC repealed the administrative courts’ decisions to suspend the case on appeal of the applicants.
Most probably this development of the court practice was the true reason for the three MPs legislative initiative. Now the amendments opened the door for suspending APIA courts cases involving access to public prosecution deeds and activities as well as Prosecutor General’s affairs.
Proposal for Imprisonment in cases of publishing information about private life
In early October 2025, a grim initiative by a group of MPs to amend the Penal Code attracted public attention. The proposal was to penalize one who disseminates by print or mass media, or by E-Systems " information about the private life of another person without their consent." The proposal was supplemented with suggested amendment to allow the use of “special investigative means”, i.e., wiretapping in such cases, potentially against journalists. This legislative initiative was a precedent as prison sentence for publishing true information even about alleged “private life” has never been in place even at the time of communist Bulgaria.
The bill was introduced on 7 October 2025 and already approved by the leading parliamentary committee just two days later, without any public debate. The idea of punishing a journalist with imprisonment for disclosing true, rather than false, information about someone on the pretext that it is "information about private life" has no parallel even in the darkest decades of communist rule. After a harsh debate with the participation of experts, NGOs and media the proposal was withdrawn.
Restricting access of journalists and citizens to the property register
In August 2025, the Ministry of Justice (MJ) announced a discussion of its proposal to restrict public access to the content of notary deeds through amendments to the Registration Regulation. The sharp reaction of professional organizations and the media led to the extension of the public discussion period until November 2025. AIP also presented a critical opinion on the draft, as well as the Supreme Bar Councill. The critical statements pointed that the restricted access will contribute to fraud rather than preventing it, and will help covering corruption and wrongdoings.
There was practically no explanation of factual reasons for the legal change. The Ministry only vaguely referred to unspecified cases of fraud without citing specific cases and without making it clear how the MJ came to the conclusion that access to copies of notary deeds has led to specific fraudulent practices. The AIP's opinion emphasizes that "this is not the first attempt to restrict access to documents related to real estate transactions under the pretext of property security. In 2007-2008, such an attempt was made as a "counter-strike" to the journalistic investigation "Concrete Gardens." Similar considerations were used to attempt to restrict access to the Company Register back in 2010. "In fact, copies of notary deeds were always provided upon payment of a fee for the service, which establishes the identity of the person receiving access, which is a sufficient guarantee for the protection of individuals.
Despite the criticism, the amendment restricting public access was adopted and published in the end of 2025. It comes in force on 15 January 2026.
Measures for the transposition of the Anti-SLAPP Directive of the European Union
In 2025 the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) continued its work to transpose the Directive (EU) 2024/1069 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 April 2024 on protecting persons who engage in public participation from manifestly unfounded or abusive court proceedings (“Strategic lawsuits against public participation”). Due to a lack of political stability and change in government in 2023-2025 the work on the draft amendments did not go speedily. The working group at the MJ acting in the period between December 2023 and February 2024 had prepared draft to amend the Civil Procedure Code by adding a separate new chapter. The government formed in the beginning of 2025 continued efforts after the previous technical government did not reach much. The new working group in MJ was composed of almost the same members which helped the continuity of its work.
In the second half of 2025 the Working group redacted and updated the proposal. The new chapter in the Code of Civil Procedure (CCP) provided a special procedure for handling SLAPP civil cases. The proposal provided for a definition and criteria for identifying SLAPP cases, the possibility of early dismissal, securing the legal costs and expenses of the defendant and other. However, its last version failed to limit the possibilities for imposing injunction by blocking the respondent's bank accounts. This proved to be a major problem as can be seen in the case of judge Svetlin Mihaylov v. Mediapool where respondent’s account stayed blocked for 5 years.