ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CHURCH A OSTATNÍ proti Bulharsku

THIRD SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 31387/17
ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CHURCH and Others
against Bulgaria

The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting on 4 February 2025 as a Committee composed of:

Darian Pavli, President,
Oddný Mjöll Arnardóttir,
Diana Kovatcheva, judges,
and Olga Chernishova, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 31387/17) against the Republic of Bulgaria lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 18 April 2017 by a religious organisation and two Bulgarian nationals, whose relevant details are listed in the appended table, (“the applicants”), and who were represented by Mr K. Kanev, a lawyer practising in Sofia;

the decision to give notice of the complaint under Article 9 read in the light of Article 11 of the Convention to the Bulgarian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agents, Ms M. Kotseva and Ms B. Simeonova from the Ministry of Justice, and to declare the remainder of the application inadmissible;

the parties’ observations;

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1. The case concerns the refusal of the national courts to register the first applicant, the Orthodox Christian Church. The church was created upon the initiative of the second applicant, an Orthodox Archbishop, who wished to distance himself from the official Bulgarian Orthodox Church (hereinafter “the BOC”), in particular because of the involvement of members of its clergy with the communist secret services.

2. Fifteen persons held a founding meeting in 2016, after which the first applicant applied for registration as a religious denomination. However, in judgments of 16 September and 6 December 2016 the Sofia City Court and the Sofia Court of Appeal refused such registration. They noted that the first applicant’s name was so similar to that of the BOC that it could be seen as misleading and cause confusion among the believers. In addition, the first applicant’s founders sought to pursue the same religious beliefs and practices as the BOC.

3. The applicants (the third of them is an adherent of the first applicant) complained under Article 9, interpreted in the light of Article 11 of the Convention, of the national courts’ refusal to register the first applicant as a religious denomination. They contested the conclusion that the first applicant’s name was too close to that of the BOC, considered it a “pretext” to refuse registration, and interpreted the national courts’ findings as implicating that no other Orthodox denomination could exist outside the BOC.

THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT

4. The Government argued that any interference with the applicants’ rights under Article 9, taken in the light of Article 11 of the Convention, met the relevant requirements. In particular, the national courts had based their refusal on the fact that the first applicant’s name was so similar to that of the BOC that it could be misleading. The courts had never expressed the view that the applicable domestic law precluded the existence of any Orthodox denomination outside the BOC.

5. On the question of the first applicant’s name, the applicants contended that their case was “no different” from those of Independent Orthodox Church and Zahariev v. Bulgaria ([Committee], no. 76620/14, 20 April 2021), and Bulgarian Orthodox Old Calendar Church and Others v. Bulgaria ([Committee, no. 56751/13, 20 April 2021), where the Court had considered the applicant churches’ names sufficiently distinct from that of the BOC. The applicants explained further that ever since the 1990s the second of them had been ”disillusioned” with the BOC and had sought to create a new Orthodox denomination outside of it.

6. The applicants did not dispute that any interference with their rights could be considered to be “prescribed by law” and to pursue a legitimate aim, as required under Article 9 § 2 of the Convention. The salient question is therefore whether any interference was “necessary in a democratic society”.

7. In that regard the Court recalls that in the cases of Independent Orthodox Church and Zahariev (cited above, §§ 58-61) and Bulgarian Orthodox Old Calendar Church and Others (cited above, §§ 62-64) it found violations of Article 9 read in conjunction with Article 11 of the Convention in similar circumstances. The applicants were Orthodox churches which had been refused registration for reasons similar to the ones in the case at hand. The Court considered however that the names of the applicant churches were not the same as that of the BOC and could be “sufficiently distinguished”. In addition, it criticised the national authorities for not allowing the registration of another Orthodox denomination with the same beliefs and practices as the BOC.

8. In Bulgarian Orthodox Old Calendar Church and Others (cited above, § 87) the Court further concluded, in application of Article 46 of the Convention, that the problem discussed was systemic. It thus recommended to the national authorities to refrain from refusing registration on the ground, inter alia, that a religious denomination had a name similar to that of an already existing one, unless the two names were so alike that “the adherents of the existing religious denomination and the general public would genuinely be likely to confuse the two denominations”.

9. In the cases cited above, as well as in other cases (see Genov v. Bulgaria, no. 40524/08, § 43, 23 March 2017; “Orthodox Ohrid Archdiocese (Greek-Orthodox Ohrid Archdiocese of the Peć Patriarchy)” v. the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, no. 3532/07, § 111, 16 November 2017; Bektashi Community and Others v. the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, nos. 48044/10 and 2 others, § 71, 12 April 2018; and Ilyin and Others v. Ukraine, no. 74852/14, § 77, 17 November 2022), the Court held that requiring a religious organisation seeking registration to take on a name which is not liable to mislead believers and the general public, and which would enable it to be distinguished from already existing denominations, can in principle be seen as a justified limitation. The relevant Bulgarian law concerning such a requirement has been summarised in Bulgarian Orthodox Old Calendar Church and Others (cited above, § 30).

10. In the present case, the close similarity between the names of the first applicant and the BOC, and the resulting possibility of confusion between them, was the main reason for the national courts’ refusal to allow registration (see paragraph 2 above). The Court finds the courts’ reasoning in that regard to be not arbitrary and is prepared to accept that the two names at issue – Orthodox Christian Church and Bulgarian Orthodox Church – were too similar and could be confused. In fact, there appear to be no meaningful distinction between them, with the only difference being the addition of the word “Christian” in the first applicant’s name. The Court is thus of the view that the case can be distinguished from the previous ones where it considered that the names of the new and the existing denomination had been sufficiently distinct (compare with Ilyin and Others, cited above, §§ 78-81).

11. The above is sufficient to allow the Court to reach the conclusion that the domestic courts gave relevant and sufficient reasons to refuse the first applicant’s registration, and that any interference with the applicants’ rights was justified. The Court does not need therefore to examine whether the domestic courts took once again the position previously criticised by it that the only representative of Eastern Orthodoxy in Bulgaria was the BOC and that there could be no other Orthodox denomination.

12. In view of the foregoing, the Court concludes that the application is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Declares the application inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 6 March 2025.

Olga Chernishova Darian Pavli
Deputy Registrar President

Appendix

List of applicants: