Bulgaria

National jurisdiction · as of 2026-09-06

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The EU's Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), transposed at the EU level in this corpus, sets the baseline for protecting minors from harmful audiovisual content and for age verification on video-sharing platforms.

Bulgaria's own Radio and Television Act (Zakon za radioto i televiziyata, ZRT) carries the national transposition: Article 17a bars a media service provider from creating or distributing programs that could harm a child's physical, psychological, moral or social development, and requires the Council for Electronic Media (Savet za elektronni medii, SEM) to adopt a Code of Conduct with providers, including BNT and BNR, prescribing measures such as scheduling, age-verification tools, and encoding.

Article 19d, added for video-sharing platforms, requires a platform provider to take appropriate measures including age-verification systems for content that could harm a child's development, alongside flagging mechanisms, parental-control systems, and media-literacy tools. A violation of Article 17a(1) by a media service provider carries an administrative property sanction of BGN 15,000 to 30,000, doubled on repetition.

No adult-content age-verification statute distinct from this children's-protection regime, no social-media-specific minor-access restriction, and no app-store age-verification duty exist in Bulgarian law as of the date below.

01

Instruments on record

Radio and Television Act (ZRT), Arts. 17a and 19d, Protection of Minors and Video-Sharing Platform Age Verification

In force

Закон за радиото и телевизията (ЗРТ, Zakon za radioto i televiziyata), chl. 17a i 19d, izm. DV br. 109 ot 2020 g.

Effective 2020-12-22 · Applies to both

A media service provider must not create or distribute programs that could harm a child's physical, psychological, moral or social development, per Article 17a(1). The Council for Electronic Media adopts a Code of Conduct with providers, including the public broadcasters BNT and BNR, prescribing measures such as scheduling, age-verification tools and encoding to assess, label and restrict access to harmful programs, per Article 17a(3) and (4).

Since the 2020 transposition of the amended AVMSD, a video-sharing platform provider must take appropriate measures, including age-verification systems, to protect children from user-generated videos and audio-visual commercial communications that could harm their development, alongside signalling, parental-control, and media-literacy measures, per Article 19d. A media service provider that violates Article 17a(1) is subject to a property sanction of BGN 15,000 to 30,000, doubled on a repeat violation.

A video-sharing platform provider that violates the Act is subject to a property sanction of BGN 2,000 to 5,000 under Article 126d, with the sanction doubled for a repeat offence.

Enforcement bodySavet za elektronni medii (Council for Electronic Media), Bulgaria's independent regulator for media services and video-sharing platforms.

Source: Full text of law