EU Court Says Bulgaria Must Allow Gender Recognition
European Court of Justice finds that Bulgaria's ban on amending gender markers on birth certificates and identity documents hinders freedom of movement.
The European Court of Justice has ruled that Bulgaria’s ban on allowing transgender people to change the gender marker on their birth certificates violates European law.
The case centers on “Shipova” — referred to in court documents as K.M.H. — a Bulgarian transgender woman who moved to Italy and began hormone therapy. Her request to change the gender marker on her birth certificate in Bulgaria was denied.
With support from LGBTQ rights organizations ILGA-Europe and TGEU (Trans Europe and Central Asia), along with Bulgarian groups Bilitis Resource Center Foundation and Desytvie, Shipova challenged the government’s refusal to amend her birth certificate.
On her behalf, the organizations argued that refusing to let Shipova alter her gender marker restricts her right to “freedom of movement” — the ability to live and reside freely in any EU member state. They also said the lack of an amended birth certificate hampers her ability to live her daily life as a trans woman, according to the LGBTQ publication them.
“Because her life in Italy also depended on her Bulgarian documents, the lack of documents reflecting her lived gender creates an obstacle to her right to move and reside within EU member states,” the groups said in a news release. “This mismatch between her gender identity and expression and her gender marker in her official documents leads to discrimination in all areas of life where official documents are required. This includes everyday activities such as going to the doctor and paying for groceries by card, finding employment, enrolling in education, or obtaining housing.”
The European Court of Human Rights previously ruled — in 2020 and again in 2022 — that Bulgaria’s ban on changing gender markers on birth certificates violates the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to provide transgender people with clear, accessible, and effective procedures for legal recognition of their gender identity.
On March 12, the European Court of Justice found that Shipova was exercising her freedom of movement and is protected by EU laws safeguarding gender identity, concluding that discrepancies between a transgender person’s lived identity and the gender listed on official documents can hinder that freedom.
The court also found that European law supersedes national laws across all 27 EU member states, prohibiting countries from enforcing legislation that prevents transgender people from amending their names and gender markers in official records.
Bulgaria’s Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that transgender people could no longer change the gender marker on their identity documents, arguing that “the constitution and Bulgarian legislation are built on the understanding of the binary existence of the human species,” according to Balkan Insight.
Similarly, in 2020, Hungary — widely considered one of the EU’s more vocally anti-LGBTQ member states, in part due to the ruling Fidesz party’s scapegoating of LGBTQ people and same-sex families — banned transgender people from correcting their identity documents to match their lived gender.
The European Court of Justice’s decision now returns to the Bulgarian court that originally heard Shipova’s case for further proceedings.
The coalition of LGBTQ groups that supported Shipova praised the decision and called on EU member states to ensure they have legal gender recognition processes in place that do not impose surgical, medical, or psychiatric requirements on those seeking to change their gender.
“For years, trans people in Bulgaria have had no real possibility to obtain documents reflecting their identity, creating constant barriers in everyday life,” Adi Petrov, the project coordinator at Bilitis Resource Center Foundation, said in a statement. “In this case, those obstacles directly undermined the applicant’s right to live and move freely within the EU. Today’s judgment is an important step toward restoring dignity and legal certainty, and Bulgaria must now bring its laws and practices into line with EU law.”
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