Breaking traditional party lines, MEPs from Cyprus and Romania have decided to join forces with Bulgarian colleagues in condemning a recent ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, which they saw as an attempt to divide the Bulgarian Orthodox church.
On 22 January 2009, the ECHR ruled that the Bulgarian authorities had infringed upon individuals' freedom of religious expression by removing them from churches and temples which they had seized while claiming to be the legitimate representatives of the Bulgarian Orthodox church.
MEPs argued that according to canon law, the unity of the Bulgarian Orthodox church and the status of its leader, Patriarch Maxim, cannot be questioned. Moreover, parliamentarians considered that the dispute and schism in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (BOC) had been settled in 1998 by the only forum able to rule on the legitimacy of BOC.
Indeed, in that year, the supreme forum of Eastern Orthodoxy was held in Sofia, with the participation of all the leaders of Orthodox churches. This body unanimously recognised that the only canonical leadership of the BOC is the Holy Synod, led by Partiarch Maxim.
Consequently, MEPs considered the decision of the Strasbourg court to be "unfair". Cypriot MEP Panayiotis Demetriou (EPP-ED) suggested that the Bulgarian authorities had not done enough to present their case, and consequently lost. This view was confirmed by Bulgarian civil society representatives speaking to EurActiv off the record.
Romanian Socialist MEP Victor Bostinaru advised the Bulgarian authorities to better prepare for an appeal. In his capacity as a member of the Parliament's petitions committee, he lamented the lack of information on the case from the Bulgarian authorities, saying he had been overwhelmed by petitions but was unable to answer them.
Bulgarian MEPs Marusya Lyubcheva, Evgeni Kirilov, Iliana Iotova, Kristian Vigenin (all Socialists), Bilyana Raeva, Mariela Baeva, Vladko Panayotov (all Liberals) and Slavi Binev (non-attached) made it clear that reversing the ECHR ruling would remain high in their agendas.
Several speakers voiced their desire to boost coordination between Orthodox MEPs in the next European Parliament after the June elections, to improve the way similar challenges could be met and bring "more spirituality" to the European project.
