The mandate
Enough has been written about what does not work. We wrote some of it ourselves — on the rights page, in the history, in what people told us. This page is about the other thing: what we intend to do about it, and what you should measure us by.
It starts with three numbers, because they determine everything that follows.
- 20%of the legal protection ILGA-Europe measures40th of 49 European countries in the edition of 12 May 2026. The second-lowest score in the EU — only Romania is below us.
- 6%believe their government effectively combats prejudiceAmong LGBTIQ people in Bulgaria. FRA survey, fieldwork 2023, published 2024.
- 10%of attacks reach the policeThe share who went to the police after a physical or sexual attack. The EU-27 average is 11% — this is not a uniquely Bulgarian failure.
The state
On 5 September 2023 the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Bulgaria in Koilova and Babulkova: the absence of any form of legal recognition for same-sex couples violates Article 8 of the Convention. Three years later there is no law and no bill before parliament. Meanwhile, in August 2024, parliament pushed the so-called “propaganda” ban for schools through both readings in a single day. The direction is not stagnation. It is backwards.
The church
The Holy Synod’s position is well known and has not shifted in decades. What matters more is this: it is not a veto. In February 2024 Greece — an Orthodox-majority country whose church is at least as influential, and where two metropolitans excommunicated within their dioceses the MPs who voted in favour — passed marriage equality by 176 votes out of 300. The argument that this is impossible here because we are Orthodox has exactly one counterexample, and it is 500 kilometres away.
And ourselves
This is the uncomfortable part, which is why it goes first. The sector we are joining is funded project to project, reports in activities rather than outcomes, and almost never publishes in advance what it should be judged against. A conference is not a result. A campaign is not a result. A statement is not a result. A result is changed text in the State Gazette and a number that moves. That is not a reproach to the people — they work inside incentives they did not choose, and without them there would be nothing to inherit. The reproach is to the incentives. There is one way to change them: be the first to publish your targets and your dates, including when you have missed them.
That is why this page exists and why it looks like this. It is not a wish list. Every mission carries an expected result with a source, a country that has already done it, and a date on which we fail ourselves publicly if we have not got there.
How to read the numbers
The easiest way to lie with good intentions is to put a solid-sounding percentage next to your demand and not say where it came from. So every figure here carries a label saying what kind of claim it is, and a source. If a label is missing anywhere, that is our error — tell us and we will fix it.
Measured elsewhere is not promised here
When we write that adolescent suicide attempts fall by 7%, that was measured in the United States. It is not a forecast for Bulgaria. Countries differ in everything that matters — health systems, family structure, how things get recorded. The number is the best evidence we have, not a guarantee.
We publish what cuts against us
Every country we hold up as an example has a separate line: what this did not achieve. For PrEP in France, that line says the fall in new diagnoses among French-born men began before reimbursement and did not accelerate after it. That weakens our own ask. It stays on the page.
We do not publish conversations
We describe the kind of work we do and what will come out of it. We do not describe who we are talking to, when, or what we are saying. Early publicity is how these conversations die — that is craft, not posturing. We report on the outcome, and on the date we said it would arrive.
The three labels
- MeasuredObserved in reality and published by the source named. Not our calculation.
- DerivedOur reasoning on top of measured data. We show the basis so that you can disagree with it.
- TargetWhat we are aiming at. Not a forecast and not a promise of a result — the only promise is the date on which we will say whether we reached it.
The six missions
Ordered by how much they change life for the most people, not by how easily they can be won. The first is the hardest.
Legal recognition for couples
A partnership law that works from the day it is promulgated — and from there, the road to marriage.
Checkpoint: 31 December 2028
Where we are now
You cannot marry a person of your own sex in Bulgaria, and you cannot register a partnership or cohabitation — no such institution exists in Bulgarian law. The ban on marriage sits at constitutional level, Article 46(1).
On 5 September 2023 the ECtHR held in Koilova and Babulkova v. Bulgaria (application no. 40209/20) that the absence of any form of recognition violates Article 8. The judgment does not require Bulgaria to introduce marriage; it requires a legal framework. Three years on, there is none.
The practical cost is daily and not abstract: a hospital where you are not next of kin, an inheritance that passes you by, a child one parent does not legally have.
What we expect to change
- 57% → 69%Greece, Rainbow Map, in a single yearMeasured
Basis: ILGA-Europe: Greece stood at 57% in 2023; after the February 2024 law it rose to 7th of 49 with 69% in 2025.
- −7%suicide attempts among high school studentsMeasured
Basis: Raifman et al., JAMA Pediatrics, 2017 — a difference-in-differences analysis across US states. Among LGB students the fall was 14%.
- ≈ $2,000GDP per capita for each point of legal recognitionMeasured
Basis: Badgett, Waaldijk and van der Meulen Rodgers, World Development, 2019 — 132 countries, 1966–2011, on the eight-point GILRHO index.
All three were measured outside Bulgaria. We do not claim they will repeat here. The economic relationship is a correlation in panel data, which the authors read as running in both directions rather than as simple causation — and so do we.
Who has already done it
Greece2024
Law 5089/2024 opened civil marriage and adoption to same-sex couples. The first Orthodox-majority country to do so.
- How it passed
- Tabled on 1 February 2024 and passed on 15 February by 176 votes out of 300 — with opposition votes making up for a split in the governing majority’s own benches. The church opposed it openly and two metropolitans excommunicated those who voted in favour within their dioceses. It passed anyway.
- What changed
- Greece rose from 57% on the Rainbow Map in 2023 to 69% and 7th place of 49 in 2025. The Council of State subsequently upheld the law as constitutional.
- What this did not achieve
- The law excludes surrogacy and leaves parental rights incomplete. Marriage equality is not parenting equality — those are two separate fights, and Greece has won only the first.
Estonia2023
Marriage equality passed on 20 June 2023 by 55 votes to 34, in force from 1 January 2024. The first post-Soviet state.
- How it passed
- Written into the coalition agreement in advance rather than left to the conscience of the chamber. A country with a minority Orthodox population and a starting point very close to Bulgaria’s.
- What changed
- Estonia stands at 46% and 21st of 49 on the 2026 Rainbow Map.
- What this did not achieve
- The most important lesson is older, and it is a warning. In 2014 Estonia passed a Registered Partnership Act, in force from 1 January 2016 — but parliament never adopted the implementing provisions. Couples had to litigate to exercise the rights, and the state paid damages for its own inaction. A law without implementing rules is not a law. In Bulgaria that is the risk, not a hypothetical.
How we intend to get there
Write the text
A finished bill with explanatory memorandum and impact assessment, published and free for any sponsor to use. Nobody should have to start from a blank page, and nobody should get to use that as an excuse.
Write the implementing rules too
Alongside the law, not after it. Because of Estonia. A text that comes into force without secondary legislation is a promise the state can decline to keep without ever repealing it.
Count the votes in public
An open, dated record of where each parliamentary group stands. Not mood analysis — a count anyone can check, and catch us on if we have bent it.
Cost the inaction
What the absence of recognition costs the budget — in inheritance, in social insurance, in litigation, in emigration. In euros. “Not a priority” should carry a price.
What we do not publish. What we do not publish: who we talk to, when, and what we say to them. We publish the outcome, and the date we said it would arrive.
How you will know we are failing
If by 31 December 2028 no partnership bill with publicly named sponsors has been tabled in the National Assembly, this mission has failed for the period. We will write that here, in those words, and say what we got wrong.
A Criminal Code that names us
Get “gender identity” into the Criminal Code — and build the system that makes a report actually reach the police.
Checkpoint: the next wave of the FRA survey
Where we are now
The phrase “gender identity” does not appear a single time in the consolidated Criminal Code — verified by full-text search of the version current through State Gazette No. 55 of 16 June 2026. All four occurrences of “sexual orientation” concern sexual orientation alone. Anti-trans hate crime has no aggravated provision.
The second half of the problem is worse than the first. In 2023, homophobic motive was criminalised. Bilitis finds that reports of such crimes have not increased since. GLAS’s 2017 monitoring received 47 reports, of which 33 were complete enough to analyse — and not one of those 33 had been reported to the police.
The conclusion is inconvenient for us too: the statutory text is necessary, but on its own it demonstrably did not do the job. A mission that asks only for the text has already been shown to be insufficient.
What we expect to change
- 0occurrences of “gender identity” in the Criminal CodeMeasured
Basis: Full-text check of the consolidated version current through State Gazette No. 55 of 16 June 2026.
- 10% → 30%share of attacks that get reportedTarget
Basis: Today’s 10% is from the FRA survey. Tripling it is a target we are setting, not a forecast.
- ↑recorded hate crimes should go upDerived
Basis: If reporting starts working, the official statistics will get worse, because almost nothing has been counted until now. Derived from the gap between 19% attacked and 10% reporting.
The third figure is the opposite of what an organisation would normally want to show. Success here looks like the statistics deteriorating, and it matters that we say so now rather than when the numbers start rising and somebody uses them against us.
Who has already done it
Bulgaria2023
Homophobic motive entered the Criminal Code. Our own most useful case study — and it is a negative result.
- How it passed
- A legislative change with no accompanying system for recording, classifying and reporting such cases.
- What changed
- Bilitis documented charges under Art. 131(1)(12) on 16 December 2024 and a conviction under the same provision on 17 December 2024. So the text works once a case reaches it.
- What this did not achieve
- But the headline finding is that reports did not increase. A provision in the code does not create trust in the police and does not create statistics. That is why this mission has two halves, and the second is the expensive one.
Greece2024
Full coverage of sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics in the anti-discrimination framework.
- How it passed
- Done in the same legislative package that opened marriage — rather than as a separate, smaller fight postponed to later.
- What changed
- Greece scores highly on equality and non-discrimination in the Rainbow Map.
- What this did not achieve
- The ILGA-Europe score measures law, not enforcement. A ground being in the text does not mean cases are being brought. We have no data on Greek enforcement practice and claim nothing about it.
How we intend to get there
One sentence, ready to table
The change is small in volume — adding a ground in four places. We publish the exact wording, so that the size of the job cannot be the reason for delay.
Make reporting possible
A tool where a person describes what happened once and gets back a completed document to file, plus a plain account of what happens next. It works even when you are not ready to walk into a police station.
Count it ourselves
If the state keeps no statistics, we keep them and publish them. A number that exists in public is far harder to ignore than a number nobody has collected.
What we do not publish. We publish no reports, no individuals, and nothing that could identify a person. Aggregates only.
How you will know we are failing
If, at the next wave of the FRA survey, the share of people in Bulgaria reporting an attack has not risen above 10%, then we were wrong about either the diagnosis or the work. Either way we will write it here.
A school that does not leave a child alone
Repeal the 2024 ban in the Preschool and School Education Act.
Checkpoint: 31 December 2030
Where we are now
On 7 August 2024 the National Assembly pushed an amendment to the Preschool and School Education Act, tabled by Vazrazhdane, through both readings on the same day. It prohibits “propaganda, popularisation or incitement in any way, directly or indirectly, of ideas and views connected with non-traditional sexual orientation and/or determination of a gender identity different from the biological one”. It was promulgated by Decree No. 199 of 15 August 2024.
A year later, ILGA-Europe’s country record notes that students and teachers report the law has deepened fear and anxiety in the classroom.
This matters because, according to GLAS’s monitoring, school is where the largest number of anti-LGBTI incidents in Bulgaria happen — ahead of the street and ahead of the home. The state took the place with the most incidents and forbade the adults in it from speaking.
What we expect to change
- No. 1school is the setting with the most recorded incidentsMeasured
Basis: GLAS monitoring, 2017 — followed by the street and the home.
- 1 daytime taken to pass the ban, first reading to secondMeasured
Basis: Both readings took place on 7 August 2024. Promulgated in State Gazette No. 69 of 16 August 2024.
- 2030the year by which we want the text goneTarget
Basis: Our target. Repealing a provision in force needs a majority that does not exist today — which is why the horizon is long, not because we are relaxed about it.
We have no Bulgarian study measuring the state of the classroom before and after August 2024. That is precisely why the sixth mission on this page is to be counted.
Who has already done it
United Kingdom2003
Section 28 — the ban on “promoting homosexuality” by local authorities and schools, introduced in 1988 — was repealed: in Scotland in 2000, and in England and Wales in 2003.
- How it passed
- Repeal took fifteen years and failed several times before it passed. What turned it was changing the question: from an argument about morality to an argument about the safety of particular children in particular schools.
- What changed
- Section 28 is the direct prototype of the “propaganda” laws now moving across Eastern Europe, including the one passed in Bulgaria. Its repeal is equally direct precedent that such a text can fall.
- What this did not achieve
- Repeal on its own did not fix schools. The change came with the duties later placed on schools to tackle bullying — so repeal is the necessary beginning, not the end. If we aim only at repeal, we win very little.
How we intend to get there
Document the effect
What changed in schools after August 2024, gathered systematically and published. Without that record, repeal stays an argument between convictions.
Make material that works despite the ban
The provision applies to the education system. Outside it — with parents, with students themselves, here — it does not. What a school may no longer say, someone has to have written down elsewhere.
Do not leave teachers exposed
The scope of the text is genuinely contested, and its chilling effect on counsellors and school psychologists is real. A clear account of what the law actually prohibits is protection for them.
What we do not publish. We name no schools and publish no accounts of individual children, not even with names changed. Aggregates, and nothing else.
How you will know we are failing
If by 31 December 2030 the text is still in the law and we have not published a documented record of its effect, then we will not even have achieved the part that depended only on us.
PrEP on the public purse
Pre-exposure prophylaxis covered publicly, instead of paid for entirely out of pocket.
Checkpoint: 31 December 2029
Where we are now
The National Health Insurance Fund does not pay for PrEP. It comes entirely out of pocket. At our last check of the published price lists: roughly €57–83 for 30 tablets depending on the generic, €25.56 for the consultation, and €15.34 for the virology panel.
By contrast, treatment after a diagnosis is free, covered by the state budget through the Ministry of Health. The state pays for treatment but not for prevention. That is a defect in the logic before it is a defect in the budget.
What we expect to change
- €0of PrEP covered publicly todayMeasured
Basis: Verified against the regulations and the published price lists. Treatment after diagnosis is free; prevention is not.
- €57–83monthly out-of-pocket cost for the medication aloneMeasured
Basis: Maximum retail price depending on the generic, at our last check. Consultation and tests are on top.
- Jan 2016how long France has covered PrEP in fullMeasured
Basis: Oral PrEP has been fully reimbursed for people at high risk in France since January 2016.
We deliberately put no “infections prevented” figure here. See the “what this did not achieve” line below for why — the evidence does not support that claim, and we will not make it.
Who has already done it
France2016
Full reimbursement of oral PrEP for people at high risk of sexually acquired HIV, from January 2016.
- How it passed
- Brought inside the general health insurance system as prevention, rather than run as an exception under a special programme. Price stops being a factor in the decision.
- What changed
- A nationwide observational study tracked the roll-out from 2016 to 2021; close to half of all initiations were in the Paris region.
- What this did not achieve
- Here is the inconvenient part. A time-series analysis of new diagnoses in France for 2012–2022 found that the decline among men who have sex with men born in France began before PrEP was introduced in 2016 and did not accelerate afterwards. So we do not claim reimbursement will bring diagnoses down in Bulgaria. We claim the smaller, more defensible thing: it removes cost as a reason not to protect yourself. Whether that shows up in the statistics depends on factors reimbursement alone does not touch.
How we intend to get there
Do the arithmetic nobody has done
The cost of prevention against the cost of lifelong treatment, at Bulgarian prices. This is a decision that gets made with a spreadsheet, not a statement.
Keep the prices public and current
While there is no coverage, the only real help is knowing exactly what it costs and where. We already do this, and it does not stop if the mission drags on.
Stay out of the clinical decision
Who PrEP is right for is a doctor’s call. Our business is access and price, not indications.
What we do not publish. We publish nothing about who asks about PrEP, and we hold no such data. See the privacy page.
How you will know we are failing
If by 31 December 2029 there is no public decision on coverage — not a positive one, not a negative one, simply none at all — then we did not even manage to get the question onto the table.
Legal gender recognition, written into law
A statutory procedure, instead of a court deciding case by case.
Checkpoint: 31 December 2029
Where we are now
Bulgarian law has no statutory procedure for legal gender recognition. Between February 2023 and March 2026 it was effectively impossible, because of Interpretative Decision No. 2/2020 of the General Assembly of the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of Cassation, of 20 February 2023.
On 12 March 2026 the Court of Justice of the EU held in Case C-43/24 Shipova that EU law precludes national legislation which does not permit a change of gender data for nationals who have exercised free movement, and that national courts are not bound by an interpretation which conflicts with EU law.
In July 2026 Bulgarian media reported that the Supreme Court of Cassation allowed such a change for four applicants. We could not open a primary source, so we do not claim the practice extends to people who have never lived abroad. That is exactly the difference between case law and legislation: the first is decided case by case and guarantees nothing.
What we expect to change
- 0statutory procedures in Bulgarian lawMeasured
Basis: The 2026 Rainbow Map notes explicitly that legal gender recognition remains legally impossible.
- 2015how long Malta has had such a lawMeasured
Basis: The Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act. Malta has topped the Rainbow Map for years.
- 1 textwhat it takes to make the law predictableDerived
Basis: Our assessment: the CJEU ruling already sets the direction. What is missing is a written procedure, not a new principle.
This mission is deliberately narrower than the others. We want predictability in law — not because the rest does not matter, but because this is the part we are competent in.
Who has already done it
Malta2015
The Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act — a procedure written into law, rather than a court ruling for each individual person.
- How it passed
- Passed as a whole statute rather than an amendment bolted onto something else. Malta has led the ILGA-Europe ranking for years, and a large part of that lead comes from here.
- What changed
- Legal gender recognition is among the categories where Malta scores close to full marks.
- What this did not achieve
- Malta is a small country with a different legal tradition and a different politics. The precedent shows that such a law is possible and what it looks like — not that the road there would be the same.
On scope
This mission is legal and only legal. The clinical side — protocols, care, medicine — is not our ground and we will not pretend otherwise. It belongs to trans people and to the organisations that have held it for years and know it better than we do. We lead on the text of the law. On everything else we follow and support.
How we intend to get there
Turn the ruling into a text
The CJEU said what is not permitted. Someone has to write what is permitted, in the language of Bulgarian legislation. We publish it.
Keep the facts exact
This is the area where good intentions most often mislead: something that depends on the individual bench gets retold as “it works now”. People plan their lives around sentences like that. We write what is law, what is practice, and what we could not verify.
Point to those who litigate
Deystvie runs the strategic cases, including C-43/24 Shipova. Individual legal advice is with them, not with us.
What we do not publish. We publish no case numbers and no applicants’ names, unless those people have already made them public themselves.
How you will know we are failing
If by 31 December 2029 there is neither a statutory text nor a tabling-ready draft published by us, then we stayed at the level of commentary.
Being counted
Bulgarian data on LGBTIQ people, published on a regular cycle — by us, if by nobody else.
Checkpoint: 31 December 2027
Where we are now
Nobody knows how many of us there are, how we are doing, or what is changing. FRA runs its survey every few years across thirty countries at once. The most recent dedicated Bulgarian monitoring of anti-LGBTI incidents we could find is GLAS’s, from 2017 — nearly a decade ago.
Official statistics on the real scale simply do not exist, because at the time of that monitoring Bulgarian law did not recognise anti-LGBTI hate crime at all; with no duty to record and report, there is no number.
Every other mission on this page runs into this eventually. You cannot prove something improved if nobody measured what it was like before.
What we expect to change
- 2017the most recent Bulgarian monitoring we could findMeasured
Basis: GLAS monitoring — 47 reports received, 33 complete enough to enter the analysis.
- 0official state statistics on the scale of itMeasured
Basis: With no duty to record, classify and report, no such statistics are produced.
- every 2 yrshow often we intend to publish our own dataTarget
Basis: Our commitment. This is the only mission here that needs nobody’s permission.
That is why this mission carries the nearest date. It is also our receipt: if we cannot do the work that depends solely on us, the other five promises on this page are worth nothing.
Who has already done it
European Union2024
FRA’s LGBTIQ survey — more than 100,000 responses across 30 countries, with a separate country sheet for each, Bulgaria included.
- How it passed
- Published methodology, comparable questions between waves, and open flagging of results resting on small numbers of responses as statistically less reliable.
- What changed
- Its figures are the only thing Bulgaria can currently be compared against at all — including 19% attacked over five years against an EU-27 average of 13%, and 6% who believe their government is effective.
- What this did not achieve
- It runs rarely, and it is an online survey with self-selected participants — it is not a representative sample of the population, and FRA labels it as such. Bulgarian data every two years does not replace it, but it does fill the gap between waves.
How we intend to get there
Publish the methodology before the data
What we ask, who we reach, and what this cannot measure — written down in advance, so it cannot later be tuned to the result.
Collect without creating risk
No tracking, no profiles. Data that does not exist cannot leak, and that holds for research we run ourselves.
Give it to everyone
Free to use, including by organisations that disagree with us. The number is a public good, not an asset of ours.
What we do not publish. Nothing that could identify an individual goes into what is published — and none of it is retained after processing.
How you will know we are failing
If by 31 December 2027 we have not published the first dataset with its methodology, then this page was an exercise in writing. Judge us on that first.
What we do not promise
This list matters as much as the missions. An organisation that never says what it will not do is promising everything, and therefore nothing.
Deadlines that are not ours to keep
The dates above are dates on which we will report, not dates on which something will have happened. We do not control parliament and will not pretend to.
That other countries’ numbers will repeat here
Greece, Estonia, France, Malta and the United States are evidence that something is possible and at what cost. They are not a forecast for Bulgaria.
Clinical answers
We are not a medical institution. We will not write protocols for treatment or care. We point to those who do it properly.
A party position
We will count every group’s votes and publish them. We will not tell anyone who to vote for.
Activity dressed up as results
We will not report events held, statements issued or people reached as achievements. An achievement is changed text and a number that has moved.
How we report back
The reporting is part of the product, not an annex to it. If this page ever starts describing only successes, that means it has stopped being honest — not that we have become very good.
- Every year by 31 March
- We publish a report on each of the six missions: what happened, what did not, and whether the checkpoint date has moved — with the reason.
- On every change
- The figures on this page carry the date they were checked. When a source updates, so does this.
- When we get something wrong
- The correction stays visible. We do not edit silently — a mistake erased without trace is a second mistake.
- When we fail
- We write it with the word “failed” and without softening. This page was written in advance precisely so that we cannot wriggle out of it later.
If this looks like work worth doing
We are looking for people who can draft legislation, cost a budget, check facts and translate. We are equally looking for people who will simply tell us where we are wrong — that is just as useful.
Sources
Every number on this page comes from here. Where we have said we could not verify something, that is recorded too — in its place, not in a footnote.
- Rainbow Map and Annual Review — Bulgaria
- Rainbow Map — Greece
- Rainbow Map — Estonia
- Rainbow Map — legal gender recognition
- EU LGBTIQ Survey III — Bulgaria country sheet
- Koilova and Babulkova v. Bulgaria, application no. 40209/20
- Case C-43/24 Shipova
- The new Greek legislation opening marriage to same-sex couples
- Greece achieves marriage equality: what about full parental rights?
- Estonia legalizes same-sex marriage
- Estonia to pay damages for failing to adopt implementing legislation for civil partnership law
- Difference-in-Differences Analysis of the Association Between State Same-Sex Marriage Policies and Adolescent Suicide Attempts
- The relationship between LGBT inclusion and economic development: macro-level evidence
- Roll-out of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis use in France, 2016–2021
- Time series analysis of new HIV diagnoses in France from 2012 to 2022
- Protest after parliament approved the law against “LGBTI propaganda” in schools
Read next
- Your rightsWhere the law stands today, before we change it
- OrganisationsWho already does this work on the ground
- AboutThe rules we write everything here by