site.btaEuropean Court of Human Rights Dismisses Application by Former Bulgarian Parliament Deputy Chair over His Removal

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg Tuesday announced that it has dismissed an application by former Parliament deputy chair Valeri Zhablyanov (then of the Bulgarian Socialist Party) who was removed from office in 2018 over his misconduct during an observance of a silent minute to honour the victims of communism, and over a statement that the communist People’s Court, which killed thousands without due trial, was “necessary and inevitable wartime justice”. Zhablyanov claimed that his removal from the deputy chairmanship of Parliament violated his right to freedom of expression.

Zhablyanov was dismissed on a motion by GERB in March 2018. Sixty members of the National Assembly asked the Bulgarian Constitutional Court to declare the applicant’s removal contrary to the provisions of the 1991 Constitution guaranteeing the rule of law, political pluralism, freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of expression and the freedom of members of the Assembly to be guided solely by the Constitution, the laws, and their personal convictions. Later that year, the Constitutional Court dismissed the request.

The European Court now argues that Zhablyanov’s statement about the People’s Court ”amounted to a categorical and wholesale justification of that tribunal, without any recognition that it had been set up and had operated in breach of the basic fair-trial requirements and had handed down thousands of arbitrary convictions and sentences of political opponents, many of which had resulted in immediate executions”. “Nor was the statement made in the heat of the moment; it was in writing, and its wording was by all appearances quite deliberate,” the Court says.

It also said: “The fact that this was a statement made by a member of parliament does not in the circumstances detract from that conclusion. It is true that freedom of expression for members of parliament as a rule enjoys heightened protection. All the same, that freedom, since it carries with it ‘duties and responsibilities’, is not absolute. In particular, statements by parliamentarians which are at odds with the democratic values of the Convention system deserve little, if any, protection. Although these ‘duties and responsibilities’ do not of course rule out any discussion of delicate or sensitive matters, it is nonetheless crucial for politicians, when expressing themselves in public, to avoid comments that might foster intolerance, and to be particularly careful to defend democracy and its principles. Owing to a politician’s status and position in society, he or she is more likely to influence voters, or even incite them, directly or indirectly, to adopt positions and conduct that may prove unlawful”. 

The Court concludes that Zhablyanov’s behaviour when he defied the rules and spoke during a silent minute in Parliament on February 1, 2018, and the statement about the People’s Court “did not deserve the heightened protection normally accorded to expression on issues of public interest”. It therefore found that there was no violation of the applicant’s right to freedom of expression.