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One step away from a law promoting volunteering – only one party seems to be clinging to pointless administrative measures

Photo: Denislav Stoychev for BCNL, Civic Alarm 2023 competition

After more than 15 years of efforts, debates, and campaigns, Bulgaria is just a step away from adopting a law to promote volunteering, which will:

  • Guarantee a state policy for the development of the volunteer movement in the country;
  • Support both volunteer activity organisers and volunteers by clarifying the legal relationship between them;
  • Create guarantees for the protection of people who devote their time and skills to socially useful causes, as well as for the people whom volunteers help;

In other words, a law that shows that volunteering is a national value.

After the National Assembly adopted at first reading three bills to promote volunteering proposed by GERB-SDS, BSP-OL, and PP-DB, on June 25, 2025, the deadline expired for proposals before the second reading of the bill that already combines the three proposals.

Earlier this year, BCNL, together with the Bulgarian Donors Forum, the TimeHeroes Foundation, the Sofia Platform, the Civil Participation Forum, and the National Youth Forum, organized another public discussion on the bills to promote volunteering, at which a common concern was shared – that meaningless and pointless administrative obligations should not be introduced, which, instead of facilitating volunteering, would actually hinder it.

Such obligations would be those currently proposed in two of the three bills on the registration of volunteers or organizers of volunteer activities. They would serve no practical purpose, but would only hinder people and burden the state budget with unnecessary expenses.

And while civil society organizations and individual citizens wrote statements and participated in parliamentary committees in support of a future law with incentives and without unnecessary administrative measures, one party turned a blind eye to the opinion of citizens and decided to use the cause of the law to promote volunteering for yet another attack on non-governmental organizations.

According to the proposal made by Vazrazhdane between the first and second readings of the law on promoting volunteering:

  • There is no need for values (proposal to delete Article 2a)
  • Children, young people, and people with intellectual difficulties are not worthy of volunteering (proposals for changes to Article 4)
  • There is also no need for detailed regulations on the state’s commitment to promoting volunteering.

Instead, according to Vazrazhdane, not only should the idea of a pointless register of volunteer activity organisers be retained, but also that this administrative burden should be made even more burdensome by requiring registrants to submit “exhaustive information on the sources and amount of their funding for the last 5 years or since the organization’s founding, if it was founded less than 5 years ago.” We would like to remind you that every organisation in Bulgaria (legal entities with non-profit status) is required to submit an annual financial report, which is published by the Registry Agency every year. In other words, Vazrazhdane is proposing not only the re-collection of already public information, but also that this be done through the need for additional efforts to fill in an unclear “comprehensive report.”

Volunteering is a non-partisan and national cause, and we are confident that most members of parliament recognize it as such. Therefore, at this final stage of the adoption of a law to promote volunteering, it is important for both citizens and their organizations to actively participate in all upcoming discussions in Parliament, either in person or in writing, to jointly develop the most sound, impactful and forward-looking legal framework