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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIn continuation of a refrain born in the early years of Bulgarian democracy, when the first human rights civil society organisations were being portrayed as national traitors, nowadays the Renaissance Party (“\u0412\u044a\u0437\u0440\u0430\u0436\u0434\u0430\u043d\u0435”), represented in Parliament, has dedicated itself to exposing “foreign agents”. Every day we hear that everything in Bulgaria is ruled by Washington and Brussels, and a “Euro-Atlantic mob” dependent on dark Western powers has taken over the institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Against this background, on 27 October 2022, the parliamentary group of the Renaissance Party submitted to the National Assembly a draft “Law on the Registration of Foreign Agents”. This legislative initiative is the latest in a series of similar attempts by anti-democratic states and political parties around the world to impose repressive measures against civil society organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bulgarians Organising for Liberal Democracy (BOLD) would not have paid any attention to this bill, which has no chance of moving forward for now, if it were not set in the new context of a hybrid war waged by the Russian propaganda machine, and if Bulgarian society were immune to the paleo-fascisoid ideas on which the bill is based. Unfortunately, our democracy is vulnerable, democratic attitudes in our society are still generally superficial and declarative, and recognising and isolating repressive incursions has not become part of our political DNA. For these reasons, we cannot ignore the Renaissance Party’s bill as if it were some harmless legal misunderstanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Russia, attempts to discredit civil society organisations by branding them as ‘foreign agents’ were successful in 2012, when a law was passed ‘On introducing amendments to individual legislative acts of the Russian Federation on regulating the activities of non-profit organisations performing the functions of a foreign agent’. Under this law, non-profit organizations that received funds from abroad and were engaged in broadly defined “political activity” were required to register as “foreign agents” and to identify themselves as such in all their publications and public statements. Many organisations that refused to comply were closed down, including the Memorial Society, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in October this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On 14 June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights, in its judgment in “Ecodefence and Others v Russia”, declared this law to be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 11 – freedom of association, interpreted in the light of Article 10 – freedom of expression). The Court pointed out that the creation of ‘foreign agent’ status severely restricted the ability of the applicant organisations to carry out their activities due to their stigmatisation. NGOs must be free to seek and receive funding from a variety of sources, and diversity of sources strengthens their independence in a democratic society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two years earlier, on 18 June 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union found a breach of Community law in Case C-78\/18 (European Commission v Hungary), concerning a similar law restricting the funding of civil society organisations. The Court found that Hungary had breached its obligations under Article 63 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and a number of articles of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (freedom of movement of capital, freedom of assembly and association, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bill tabled at the end of October 2022 by the Renaissance Party goes much further than its Russian original and its Hungarian epigone in the direction of destroying civil liberties. For example, unlike the Russian law, which mainly targets non-profit organisations engaged in political activity and aims to morally discredit them, the Renaissance Party’s bill affects any ‘natural and\/or legal entities’, regardless of whether their activity is political, and aims not only to discredit them but also to exclude them from public life. A huge number of individuals and organisations would be subject to civil annihilation if they received BGN 1 000 or more from a source abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Renaissance Party’s bill is not just legally untenable, and in breech of the Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights and the primary law of the European Union. Indeed, it is fundamentally incompatible with the type of social relations that characterise our modern state and society. It is obvious that such legislation, unprecedented in its obscurantism in Europe, cannot be part of the public order in a democratic society, still less in a Member State of the European Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the face of it, the bill is motivated by a desire to apply the principles of transparency, accountability and sustainability of donor investment. But NGOs in this country already have strict publicity, accountability and transparency obligations under the Non-Profit Legal Entities Act, the Local Taxes and Fees Act, the Accounting Act, the Anti-Money Laundering Measures Act, and they also have obligations to declare donations to the Ministry of Justice’s Registry Agency. But while anyone can check the official sources of funding for civil society organisations in the relevant public registers, it remains unclear who the invisible beneficiaries of financial flows from Russia to Bulgaria are, and who sponsors Russia’s unprecedentedly active hybrid propaganda of recent years. Are we not witnessing foreign agents shouting “catch the foreign agents”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also on the face of it, the bill is motivated by the idea of sovereignty: it seems logical that foreign governments should not meddle in Bulgaria’s internal affairs. But the right to participate in public life, the right to free association, as well as human rights and civil liberties in general, are not “internal affairs” of Bulgaria. The principle that they are of universal interest and subject to international scrutiny is a well-established principle of international law. Anyone can express concern and contribute in practice to their observance in any country, no matter how hard dictators and autocrats try to close their borders to “foreign influence”. For decades, the argument of “non-interference in internal affairs” has been a routine part of the strategies to crush civil society employed by authoritarian regimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Renaissance Party’s bill, as the Bulgarian Center for Not-for-Profit Law’s analysis of 2 November 2022 shows, is not a first of its kind but is a continuation of a number of previous assaults on civil society perpetrated in the recent past by VMRO-BND, Ataka, NFSB, and others. What they have in common is not love of the homeland, but hatred of liberal democracy that they perceive as a malign import from the outside world, and more precisely from what Putin calls the “collective West”. Like their allies in Russia, China, Hungary, Egypt, Nicaragua and other autocratic regimes, Bulgarian anti-democratic parties seek to publicly stigmatize and destroy independent civil society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite this apparent continuity, what is new about this bill is that it has emerged in the context of the pro-Putin hybrid propaganda that flourishes in Bulgaria. In today’s geopolitical situation, the Renaissance Party’s campaign against “foreign agents” includes not only the bill introduced in October, but also the supposedly patriotic accusations repeated daily and on all occasions against anyone whose geopolitical orientation is not towards Russia. This campaign has the effect of normalising racism and xenophobia in Bulgarian political discourse, deepening the dividing lines in Bulgarian society, destabilising Bulgaria and pushing us in the direction desired by Putin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BOLD calls on political parties, civil society, institutions and the media in Bulgaria to create a sanitary cordon around the “foreign agents” campaign of the Renaissance Party. The isolation of political actors with a blatantly anti-democratic profile that copy and transfer to Bulgarian soil practices stigmatized by the civilized world can only have a healthy effect on Bulgarian democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BOLD Position<\/p>\n
BOLD calls on political parties, civil society, institutions and the media in Bulgaria to create a sanitary cordon around the “foreign agents” campaign developed by the Revival Party<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":7396,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[99,101],"tags":[118,134],"yoast_head":"\n