An initiative committee, which started a petition to call a referendum against "gender ideology" and was supported by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), managed to collect a little over 208,000 signatures for the three-month period it had (it expired on July 26). This was announced at a briefing on the sidelines of parliament by the two co-chairs of the committee, left-wing MP Irena Anastasova and Vladimir Sheitanov, who represents the ROD association.

The question under which the citizens signed was: "Do you support the introduction of a ban on education, schooling and propaganda related to gender reassignment and concepts of gender other than male and female among children and students in the educational system of Bulgaria?".

Anastasova and Sheitanov defined the achieved result as a success and a "very big victory" and announced that they will submit the signatures to the National Assembly. However, this is only the first step of the procedure. From now on, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Rosen Zhelyazkov, must immediately send the signature to the General Directorate "Civil Registration and Administrative Services" (GRAO), which carries out an official inspection no later than 45 days after receiving it.

If the check finds that at least 200,000 valid signatures have been collected, the proposal goes to the parliament for a vote and it must be submitted within three months whether to organize a poll or not. However, the leader of the left, Kornelia Ninova, expressed doubt as to whether a referendum on such a question would be called, basing her words on the rejected referendum of "Vazrazhdane" for the preservation of the Bulgarian lev.

If the valid signatures are below 200,000, then the procedure will be considered unsuccessful.

BSP talked about organizing a referendum against "gender ideology" for the first time at the party congress in February. The party announced in March that it was starting to collect signatures, and the procedure itself was officially opened on April 26.

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