Republika Bułgarii: Decyzja numer 13 Sądu Konstytucyjnego Bułgarii z dnia 27 lipca 2018 r.

Abstract

The decision of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Bulgaria concerns the incompatibility of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, drawn up on 11 May 2011 in Istanbul (hereinafter: the Istanbul Convention; the Convention) with the Constitution. The decision was issued on 27 July 2018. The Constitutional Court ruled that the Istanbul Convention, due to the provisions of Article 3(c) and Article 4 § 3, which are fundamental to its interpretation, is inconsistent with the Constitution due to the fact that the Convention does not allow for reservations to be made to these provisions. The reason for finding these provisions inconsistent with the Bulgarian Constitution was that the Convention recognized gender as a social construct, breaking down the unity of the socio-cultural dimension and the biologically determined gender. Both of these approaches are recognized by the Convention as autonomous, equal. The Constitutional Court indicated that at the axiological level, the Istanbul Convention includes aspects of gender ideology, which it defined as: “all ideas, beliefs and convictions according to which biologically determined sexual characteristics are irrelevant, and only gender self-identification is important”. The decision also indicated that the terms “gender” and “gender identity” used in the Convention do not have an unambiguous content, which violates the principle of the rule of law, and makes it impossible to determine what the state party to the Istanbul Convention is obliged to undertake. The ruling issued by the Constitutional Court ended the ongoing political dispute in Bulgaria regarding the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. The findings made by the Bulgarian Constitutional Court may also be important in the ongoing discussion in Poland, the subject of which is the termination of this international agreement.