Three members of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the party led and supported mainly by Bulgarians of Turkish ethnicity, have been penalized by the Central Election Commission for campaigning in Turkish before Bulgaria’s October 5 parliamentary elections. Electoral law forbids campaigning in any language other than Bulgarian.

Prior to the 2014 EU Parliament elections, Bulgarian Helsinki Committee stood firmly in favor of the right of linguistic minorities to access political messages in their mother tongues. BHC called for the enshrinement of this right in a new electoral law.