A Perfect Storm: The Extraordinary Constitutional Attack against the Istanbul Convention in Bulgaria

Abstract

On 27 July 2018, Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court delivered a judgment declaring the Istanbul Convention “incompliant” with the country’s Constitution. This article examines the origin and nature of the extraordinary constitutional attack against this Convention in Bulgaria which can be described as a “perfect storm” - diverse, unrelated factors concurred and conditioned an event with long-lasting repercussions that are difficult to overcome. It first analyses the political context which permitted a misinformation campaign and motivated Boyko Borissov’s GERB party to seek a constitutional review of the document. Then, it explains why the method of appointing judges in Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court and the particularities of its jurisdiction make this institution susceptible to political influences. After critically evaluating the questionable legal reasoning in the actual decision, the article explores its consequences. Among them, the most notable damage concerns the current legal impossibility to ratify the Istanbul Convention in Bulgaria. At this stage, the country can only count on piecemeal legislative solutions to introduce to Bulgarian legislation the spirit of relevant provisions of the Convention that have not been contested.

Keywords: Istanbul Convention, Bulgaria, Constitutional Court, comparative constitutional law, human rights, women’s rights, violence against women, rule of law