During its Human Rights meeting of 6-8 December, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe examined the execution of the UMO Ilinden and Others group of ECHR judgments concerning the domestic courts’ unjustified refusals, between 1999 and 2015, to register associations whose aim was to achieve the recognition of "the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria”.
The Committee deplored the fact that despite the adoption of Interim Resolution CM/ResDH(2020)197 and subsequent decisions, more than 16 years after the first final judgment in this group, the applicants and other similar associations continue to be routinely refused registration, mainly due to a wider problem of disapproval of their goals, and are confronted with the persistent emergence of new rejection grounds, even though the registration documents have been repeatedly examined.
The Committee stressed again that the present judgments do not give rise to an obligation to recognise a group of persons as a minority but clearly require that domestic authorities should not refuse registration on grounds, related to the associations’ goals, which have been repeatedly rejected by the European Court. It also stressed that to allow tangible progress, the Registration Agency and the competent courts should not refuse registration of the applicant or similar associations on grounds, which contradict the European Court’s judgments in these cases, and should exhaustively identify all deficiencies of the registration documents.
Lastly, the Committee affirmed its readiness, in the absence of tangible progress before September 2023, to invite the Chair of the Committee of Ministers to send a letter to the Bulgarian authorities to urge them to find swift solutions in order to abide fully and effectively by these ECHR judgments.
- News item in Bulgarian (unofficial translation)
- Latest Notes and Decisions of the Committee of Ministers concerning these cases (unofficial translation into Bulgarian of the Decisions)
