On March 11, 2025, the official website of the far-right and ultranationalist Revival Party (Vazrazhdane) revealed that a supporter of the party had filed a report with the prosecutor’s office requesting an investigation into The Art of Behaving Badly exhibition. The submitter of the report referred to Article 162 of the Criminal Code (CC), which criminalizes hate crimes.
Ironically, this report highlights the urgent need to amend the Criminal Code to include gender-based hate crimes. Currently, Bulgarian law prohibits incitement to hatred based on race, ethnicity, color, descent, nationality, and sexual orientation. However, incitement to hatred based on gender remains unrecognized as a crime.
Time for Legal Changes
The call to include gender as a protected characteristic in the Criminal Code is long overdue. Bulgaria has an international obligation to criminalize gender-based hate speech by June 14, 2027, in line with Directive (EU) 2024/1385 of the European Parliament. Article 8(1) of the Directive requires Member States to penalize:
“the intentional incitement to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or against a member of such a group defined on the basis of sex, by means of the public dissemination, through ICT, of material containing such incitement.”
n addition to gender-based hate speech, Bulgaria is also required—under the same Directive—to introduce criminal liability for offenses targeting individuals based on their profession or public role. This includes attacks on public officials, journalists, and human rights defenders. At present, Bulgarian law does not offer specific protections for these groups, despite existing aggravating circumstances for crimes committed against doctors and teachers. Legislative reform is urgently needed to protect those defending citizens’ rights.
An Exhibition is Not a Crime, It’s Free Expression
Even if gender-based hate speech were already criminalized, the Art of Being Naughty exhibition would not fall under the scope of the Criminal Code. This is because it is an exercise of the fundamental right to freedom of expression and presents objective, statistical data. The data featured in the exhibition relates to events in the United States and is not connected to the Bulgarian context.
The exhibition’s authors do not claim that gender discrimination exists in Bulgaria. However, such discrimination has already been legally established by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in its May 23, 2023 ruling in the case of A.E. v. Bulgaria. The differential treatment of men and women in the country is an indisputable fact recognized by an international court. The dissemination of this fact is protected speech and cannot be interpreted as hate speech or a crime.
Notably, in early March 2025, an international monitoring report on Bulgaria highlighted the lack of progress in combating gender-based violence. The report examined the number of protection orders issued, the number of victims receiving social services, and the overall effectiveness of government responses to gender-based violence.
In response, BFW submitted a statement emphasizing that the ECtHR rulings in A.E. v. Bulgaria and Y. v. Bulgaria remain unimplemented. The number of victims continues to rise, with women disproportionately affected. Crisis centers are not expanding, and no significant measures have been introduced to change public attitudes towards gender equality. Gender education in schools is still absent, among other gaps.
On March 6, 2025, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe ruled that Bulgaria would remain under enhanced monitoring due to its failure to address gender-based violence adequately. By year’s end, Bulgaria must submit updated statistics and concrete measures for implementing the Law on Protection from Domestic Violence.
In Conclusion
Although the report filed by the Revivalist Party supporter is legally unsubstantiated, it brings to light a critical issue—the absence of legal protection against gender-based hate speech. We demand urgent legislative reform to ensure equal protection under the law for all citizens, regardless of gender.
Photo: Rosina Pencheva
