An Important Step Towards Recognizing Trans People and Their Rights in Bulgaria
A key hearing in a landmark case on trans people and their rights in Bulgaria took place at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg on 22 May.
The preliminary ruling in the Shipov case was sent in a pending case before the Supreme Court of Cassation for gender recognition of a trans woman living in Italy. The applicant has had a lower court refuse to recognise her gender marker and, accordingly, change her legal gender.
The Supreme Court judges are asking the CJEU whether the total ban on changing legal gender in Bulgaria is contrary to EU law.
The discrepancy between the applicant’s gender identity in the main proceedings and the information in her documents leads to discrimination in all areas of life where such documents are required – from access to healthcare, goods and services, to finding a job, enrolling in educational institutions, renting a home or receiving social support. This also constitutes an obstacle to her free movement.
The European Court of Human Rights has already ruled that Bulgaria is in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to provide a swift, transparent and accessible procedure for legal gender recognition – first in 2020 in the case of Y.T., and then in 2022 in the case of P.H. Since then, the situation of trans people in Bulgaria has significantly deteriorated.
On 20 February 2023, the Supreme Court of Cassation adopted a binding interpretative decision, ruling that Bulgarian law does not allow courts to authorise a change of gender, name and personal identification number of trans people in the civil status register. This decision effectively introduced a general, automatic and universal ban on Bulgarian courts granting legal gender recognition.
The Advocate General of the CJEU will deliver his opinion on 4 September 2025
A positive decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) would be of paramount importance for the protection of trans people, who are still deprived of any possibility of legal recognition of their gender identity in some EU Member States. It would confirm that refusals such as the one in the Shipov case are incompatible with the fundamental values of the EU and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU.
The organizations Deystvie, Bilitis, the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, ILGA-Europe and TGEU (Transgender Europe and Central Asia) are working in support of the applicant and her team. In the national proceedings, the applicant is represented by attorney Natasha Dobreva, and in the case before the CJEU, the team is joined by attorney Alexander Shuster and attorney Denitsa Lyubenova, president of Deystvie. The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee assisted attorney Shuster with the presentation of the legal framework for changing data in civil status registers in Bulgaria.