ECHR orders Bulgaria to allow Jehovah's Witnesses to go door-to-door

The ECHR ruled that the ban on 'door-to-door' preaching is undemocratic. Photo: JW.ORG

The Strasbourg court concluded that municipal bans on door-to-door religious conversations do not meet the requirements of a democratic society and are excessive. This was reported by Sudovo-Yurydychna Gazeta.

The case stemmed from a provision introduced by the municipal council of the city of Shumen back in 2016. At the time, officials banned any “religious propaganda” in citizens’ homes, citing complaints about visits by representatives of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The authorities said the missionaries were persistently offering literature and holding conversations on spiritual topics, and introduced a system of administrative fines for such activity.

Representatives of the organization and two of its members challenged the restrictions in Bulgarian national courts. Although the Shumen court recognized the ban as unlawful in 2017, Bulgaria’s Supreme Administrative Court overturned that decision in 2021. The Bulgarian judges held that the protection of private life and the inviolability of the home outweighed the right to preach.

However, in Strasbourg, the judges recalled that freedom of religion expressly includes the right to peacefully spread one’s beliefs and to try to persuade others through preaching and teaching. The ECHR stressed that the ban in Shumen had been drafted too broadly: it covered all forms of religious communication, without distinguishing between coercion and peaceful conversation.

At the same time, the Bulgarian authorities did not provide evidence that the organization’s activities had led to systematic breaches of public order.

In its decision, the court separately noted that mere contact with religious views a person does not share cannot in itself be grounds for banning missionary activity. Thus, Strasbourg effectively confirmed the inadmissibility of discriminatory restrictions that applied only to believers, while political campaigning or commercial offers in the city remained permitted.

As the UOJ reported, the Estonian Church may apply to the ECHR over the anti-church law.

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