site.btaStrasbourg Court Says Bulgarian Regulations on Use of Informers Do Not Meet Minimum Human Rights Convention Safeguards

In a Chamber judgment on Tuesday in the case of Green Alliance v. Bulgaria (application no. 6580/22) the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights, the ECHR press service said on Tuesday.

The case concerned regulations issued in 2008 and amended in 2018, which allow Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security to infiltrate “agents on cover” (informers) into private entities or as members of a “liberal profession”. Such agents conceal that they are working for the Agency but are not allowed to use covert surveillance techniques or equipment and are considered different from undercover agents.

A claim brought by Green Alliance in 2018 before the Bulgarian courts for judicial review of the regulations was unsuccessful. In the present judgment, the Court found that the regulations governing the use of “agents on cover” fell short of the minimum safeguards against arbitrariness and abuse required under Article 8. In particular, the grounds on which these agents could be deployed and the fields in which they could work were wide-ranging; there were no time-limits circumscribing their use; the procedure for deploying them did not ensure that they would only be used when “necessary in a democratic society”; no arrangements existed for their effective supervision; and there was no remedy in relation to their unlawful or unjustified use.