THIRD SECTION
CASE OF ZHABLYANOV v. BULGARIA
(Application no. 36658/18)
JUDGMENT
Art 10 • Freedom of expression • Removal of a Deputy Speaker of Parliament
for speeches and behaviour justifying repressions of the communist regime •
Distinction between removal from professional posts and from political posts
as that held by the applicant • Statements not deserving the heightened
protection normally accorded to expression on public-interest issues •
Necessity of measure assessed against backdrop of post-WWII history of
Bulgaria and totalitarian nature of communist regime • States which had
experienced communist repressions under a special moral responsibility to
distance themselves from them • Removal symbolic and preventive rather
than punitive • Measure “necessary in a democratic society”
STRASBOURG
27 June 2023
FINAL
27/09/2023
This judgment has become final under Article 44 § 2 of the Convention.
It may be subject to editorial revision.
,
, ZHABLYANOV v. BULGARIA JUDGMENT
In the case of Zhablyanov v. Bulgaria,
The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting as a
Chamber composed of:
Pere Pastor Vilanova, President,
Jolien Schukking,
Yonko Grozev,
Armen Harutyunyan,
Georgios A. Serghides,
Peeter Roosma,
Andreas Zünd, judges,
and Milan Blaško, Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 36658/18) against the Republic of Bulgaria lodged
with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of
Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by a
Bulgarian national, Mr Valeri Mirchev Zhablyanov (“the applicant”),
on 25 July 2018;
the decision to give the Bulgarian Government (“the Government”) notice
of the complaint concerning an alleged interference with the applicant’s right
to freedom of expression, and to declare the remainder of the application
inadmissible; and
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated in private on 30 May 2023,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
INTRODUCTION
1. The case chiefly concerns two questions under Article 10 of the
Convention. The first is whether the removal of a Deputy Speaker of the
Bulgarian Parliament from his post on account of public statements of his can
be seen as “interference” with his right to freedom of expression within the
meaning of Article 10 § 1, in particular in the light of the nature of that post.
The second question is whether that removal, which was chiefly based on a
statement justifying “the People’s Court” – an extraordinary criminal
tribunal operating during the first year of the communist takeover of Bulgaria
in 1944-48 – may be seen as meeting the requirements of Article 10 § 2, and
in particular, to have been “necessary in a democratic society”.
THE FACTS
2. The applicant was born in 1965 and lives in Sofia. He was represented
before the Court by Mr M. Ekimdzhiev and Ms K. Boncheva, lawyers
practising in Plovdiv.
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, ZHABLYANOV v. BULGARIA JUDGMENT
3. The Government were represented by their Agent, Ms S. Sobadzhieva
of the Ministry of Justice.
I. THE APPLICANT’S ELECTION AS DEPUTY SPEAKER
4. In March 2017 the applicant was elected as a member of Bulgaria’s
Parliament – the National Assembly – on the ticket of the Bulgarian Socialist
Party (until April 1990, the Bulgarian Communist Party).1
5. At its first plenary sitting in April 2017, the newly elected Assembly
adopted special rules of procedure for the election of its Speaker and Deputy
Speakers. According to those rules, there were to be five Deputy Speakers –
one for each of the parties or coalitions whose candidates had been elected as
members of the Assembly (see paragraph 46 below) – and they were to be
voted on en bloc rather than one by one. The parliamentary group of the
Bulgarian Socialist Party, which held eighty out of the 240 seats, nominated
the applicant. He, as well as the other four Deputy Speakers (one for each of
the other four parliamentary groups), was elected by 235 votes, with no votes
against and no abstentions.
II. THE APPLICANT’S STATEMENTS IN ISSUE
A. About the treaty with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
6. At its plenary sitting on 18 January 2018, the National Assembly
debated a proposal by the government to ratify a “Treaty of friendship, good-
neighbourliness and cooperation” concluded in August 2017 between
Bulgaria and (as it then was) the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
After reports on the treaty were presented by members of the two
parliamentary committees tasked with analysing it, nine members of the
Assembly, including the applicant, were given the floor to speak about it.
7. The applicant noted at the outset that he would speak in his personal
capacity as member of the Assembly. He went on to criticise the manner in
which the treaty had been concluded, as well as some of its clauses and
1. The Bulgarian Social-Democratic Party was founded in 1891. In 1903 it split into two
factions: “wide” and “narrow” socialists. In 1919 the “narrow socialist” faction took the name
Bulgarian Communist Party (narrow socialists) and aligned itself with the Bolsheviks in
Russia. In 1924 it was judicially dissolved under a newly enacted statute prohibiting “any ...
organisations or groups which, to attain their goals, preach or use ... criminal offences, armed
actions, violence or terrorist acts, or set up clandestine branches”. In 1938 it merged with the
Bulgarian Workers’ Party (communists). The first time it came to power was as a member of
the Fatherland Front Government formed after the coup d’état on 9 September 1944 (see
footnote 13). In 1948, when it was already the dominating political party in Bulgaria, it took
the name Bulgarian Communist Party. It kept that name until April 1990, when, in the wake
of the fall of the communist regime in late 1989, it renamed itself the Bulgarian Socialist
Party. It continues to operate under that name.
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