Put it in writing. Here is the text.

One thing, before anything else

There is no anonymous route. That is not our choice — it is how Bulgarian law is written, and it is better learned here than after you have filed.

The Commission for Protection against Discrimination does not examine anonymous complaints (чл. 51, ал. 3 ЗЗДискр). An anonymous report is not a lawful basis for opening criminal proceedings (чл. 209, ал. 1 НПК). The person you file against receives a copy and answers it — otherwise the proceeding cannot move. Commission hearings are open by чл. 61, ал. 1.

So every mechanism that works asks for your name and tells the other side what it is about. If you are somewhere that makes that dangerous — and Bulgaria has many such places — that is a real reason not to file. Deciding not to file is not weakness and it is not silence. The log below exists for exactly that person: it keeps your evidence while the circumstances change.

Three questions before you write

They are not a formality. Each one is a reason for somebody to stop here — and for that person, stopping is the right outcome.

1. Is there danger right now?

If you are being threatened, if you are being beaten, if you have nowhere to sleep tonight — the document is not the first thing. Call 112 and look at the crisis lines. The Protection Against Discrimination Act contains no emergency measure. One exception worth knowing: under чл. 76, ал. 1, т. 2 the Commission can suspend an unlawful employer order on the affected person's proposal. There is no fast lane, but there is something to ask for.

Crisis lines

2. Who will read this, and what will they learn about you?

The complaint reaches the person it is against. Letters arrive at the address you wrote, in an envelope with the institution's name on it. In a twelve-desk office a чл. 17 investigation outs you to the whole office by Thursday, whatever the letter says. Think about the correspondence address before you write: if you live with family who do not know, a letter from the Commission in the postbox is an outing.

3. If you lose this job in two months — is there somewhere to live?

This question has nothing to do with law and matters more than the rest. Retaliation is the usual outcome, not the exception: a request for explanations under чл. 193 КТ, then a "reorganisation" under чл. 328, ал. 1, т. 3. The law calls that victimisation and treats it as discrimination (§ 1, т. 3) — but a prohibition does not pay rent. If the answer is no, that does not mean never. It means the log first, the document after.

Clocks already running

The deadliest mistake in this whole area is this one: somebody fired for being gay files with the Commission because the deadline is three years — and misses the two-month deadline to challenge the dismissal itself. So both clocks sit on one screen.

What	Deadline	Runs from	Basis
Challenging a dismissal in court	2 months	the day of termination	чл. 358, ал. 1, т. 2 КТ
Answering a "by mutual consent" offer	7 days — silence is refusal	receiving the offer	чл. 325, ал. 1, т. 1 КТ
Challenging a written reprimand	1 month	service of the order	чл. 358, ал. 1, т. 1 КТ
Appealing a Commission decision — filed THROUGH the Commission	14 days	notification	чл. 68, ал. 1 ЗЗДискр
Appealing a prosecutor's refusal or termination	7 days	receiving the copy	чл. 243, ал. 4 НПК
Private complaint for insult, defamation or threat	6 months	the day you learned of it	чл. 81, ал. 3 НПК
Complaint to the Commission for Protection against Discrimination	3 years	the act itself — not from discovery	чл. 52, ал. 1 ЗЗДискр
Administrative signal, and the Ombudsman	2 years	the violation	чл. 111, ал. 4 АПК
Tort claim for damages	5 years	identifying the perpetrator — not the act	чл. 110 with чл. 114 ЗЗД
Application to the European Court of Human Rights	4 months	the final domestic decision	Art. 35 § 1 ECHR

Checked on 14 August 2026. If you are reading this after August 2027, ask a lawyer.

If you think your deadline has expired

Do not stop here. If the harassment is still going on, the clock may run from the last act rather than the first. Nobody should give up on a complaint because of a calculation they did on their phone at one in the morning. This is exactly the question to take to a lawyer — and at „Действие" that is free.

The documents

Three for now. Each opens in full — first what it does, who reads it and what follows, then the text itself. You can print it blank and fill it in by hand.

What we are still working on, and why it is not here

Each of these matters, and each has a reason for not being in the first version. The reason is written down so you can judge it yourself.

Complaint to the Commission (КЗД)

„Действие" already run a generator at deystvie.org that assembles the complaint and gives you a PDF — use theirs. We will publish ours once a lawyer has reviewed how the ground under чл. 4, ал. 1 is pleaded and how you choose between the Commission and the court under чл. 52, ал. 2. That choice runs one way only and is not a form question.

Reporting a crime to the police

This is the document that cannot be taken back. Once filed for a state-prosecuted offence you cannot stop it — and if the perpetrator is a relative, that means a courtroom in a small town with your orientation as a matter to be proved. We will not publish it until there is somebody at „Действие" or the Helsinki Committee to take those calls. Until then: doctor and photographs first, lawyer second, document third.

Signal to a head teacher

The Bulgarian school mechanism runs through the parent, and чл. 8, ал. 2 ЗЗакрД gives parents the right to be informed. For a child who is not out at home, the signal can be more dangerous than the bullying. If you are under 18: 116 111 is free, 24/7, and does not ask for a name.

Complaint to the data protection authority after an outing

Disclosing your orientation or HIV status is processing of a special category of personal data. The route is real but it has traps — an electronic complaint needs a qualified electronic signature, and the window is 6 months from discovery and never more than 2 years from the act. This is the next one we will write.

What happens to what you type

The form has nowhere to submit to. This site is only files — there is no application to receive data. The rule form-action 'none' in the site's security policy forbids your browser from submitting the form anywhere at all, and you can check that yourself in developer tools. We receive nothing of what you write, and could not.

What is visible anyway: that you opened this page. Its address, the time and your IP address pass through your internet provider and through Cloudflare, who serve the site. On a work or school network, their server sees the page address before you have typed a single letter.

So the first practical rule matters more than the whole paragraph above it: do not open this on a work or school device, and not over the work Wi-Fi.

What we cannot promise you

What we cannot promise you: your phone, the office printer, and anyone with access to your device. A phone keyboard learns words — names, the company, the slur — and later offers them in another app, to whoever is holding the phone. We have turned off spellcheck and page translation, because both send the text out. For the rest, there is discreet mode and the quick exit.

What we could not verify

The same rule as everywhere else here: if we have not seen it in a primary source, we do not assert it. In a section about documents this list matters more than usual, because a wrong deadline costs a case.

Whether the Commission anonymises complainants' names in the public register it keeps under чл. 47, т. 7. The register exists; we have not opened individual decisions. We promise no anonymity.
Whether the Labour Inspectorate examines a sexual-orientation discrimination complaint on the merits or forwards it to the Commission. We found no official division of competence — so we send nobody there as a first move.
The limitation period for the damages claim under чл. 71 ЗЗДискр. The act is silent and чл. 110 and чл. 111 ЗЗД point in different directions. We publish no number.
Whether a court fee is due on the чл. 68 appeal to the administrative court. So we write "free" for nothing after the Commission's decision.
Whether the state secure electronic delivery system accepts complaints to the Commission without a qualified electronic signature. If it does, that would change this whole section for somebody in a village with no registry office nearby — we are checking.
Whether a covert audio or video recording will be admitted in evidence. Practice diverges between criminal and civil proceedings and there is no binding interpretation.
The internal steps of the school anti-bullying mechanism. The order exists; its full text does not open from a ministry server.

Hand in hand

Here is the text. Here is the deadline. Here is who receives it. The decision is yours.

Individual legal advice is not with us — it is at „Действие", free, from people who have been running these cases since 2014. We are the ones who lay out the paper while you decide.

And if you decide to file nothing — that is a decision too, and nobody here will tell you it was the wrong one. You know your family, your town and your boss better than we do.

Made by us, for us.