By Alexenia Dimitrova
„I am not fighting for myself. I am fighting for the people who work in the state owned Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) Kozloduy. These employees deserve to get a medical help, medical supervision and medical advice from independent medical facility, which is registered and controlled in accordance with the Law on Medical facilities in Bulgaria. If the medical staff is paid by the plant, it could be kind of biased in its medical decisions, couldn’t it?“
Three years ago 52-years old Bulgarian medical nurse Nataliya Stancheva sounded like a woman who was determined to bring her fight to its end. „I am a bit tired and financially drained. Weakening me financially is a way to shut me up. However, I would not stop. The practice I am fighting against must stop. It is a question of principles, right?”, she said recently for this publication.
The woman confirmed that she was about to terminate several of the court cases she initiated for different occasions. She does not have money to pay her legal costs anymore. She got recently a financial help of 11 000 Bulgarian leva (about 5600 Euro) from the Association of the European Journalists (AEJ) in Bulgaria. The Association initiated a fundraising campaign in December 2024 to help her paying the legal costs for a lawsuit, which NPP started against her in July 2023.
„The plant requested a compensation from her 500 000 Bulgarian leva (around €255,000) claiming that Stancheva has executed bad faith behavior, abuse of rights, dissemination of false information. The claim also stated that due to the flood of her Freedom of Information Act requests, the management suffered anxiety and had their everyday work disrupted”, explained the lawyer and legal advisor Alexander Kashumov – Executive Director of Access to Information Program (AIP) in Bulgaria, who represented Stancheva during this lawsuit. (How the lawsuit develop – read further below.)
Stancheva started sending requests to NPP for access to public information under the Bulgarian Access to Public Information Act (APIA) in 2022. She asked to receive information about the legal permissions related to the functioning of the NPP medical center and the medical activities performed therein.
NPP was not the only institution Stancheva has sent requests to seek public information. „I have sent more than 100 requests under the Bulgarian law for access to public information in the last years”, Stancheva says. She asked information from at least 15 institutions in Bulgaria. Among them were a number of Ministries – of Health, of Energy, of Labor, of Transport, of Interior, and of Environment and Waters, as well institutions like the National Center of Radiobiology and Radiation Protection, the Regional Health Inspectorate in Vratsa, the National Health Insurance Fund, the Agency for Atomic Regulation, еtc.
After receiving the information she requested, Stancheva sent alerts to a dozen of institutions, incl. Ministry of Health, National Center for Radiobiology and Radiation Protection, Executive Agency “Medical Supervision” and the Regional Health Inspectorate in Vratsa. „I have sent more than 200 alerts till now“, Stancheva says. She alarmed them that the Office of Occupational Medicine on the premises of the NPP worked as unregistered Diagnostic and Consulting Center and provided medical services to employees without being registered under the Law on Medical Facilities. She insisted that the law requires workers in the nuclear power plant to undergo regular mandatory medical examinations in an authorized medical facility not in a facility whose medical staff is paid by NPP.
„The Medical Supervision Agency, the National Center for Radiobiology and Radiation Protection and the Regional Health Inspectorate in Vratsa, conducted on-site inspections, independently of each other, and issued notes that the medical facility was not registered under the Law on Medical Facilities”, Stancheva explains. The Medical Supervision Agency recommended steps for such registration.
After all three supervisory authorities issued mandatory prescriptions, the medical center was closed down in June 2023. The Facility opened again in October 2023 under a different name “Medical Provision and Medical Supervision (Care)” after the law had changed. These changes became subject of another court case – this time in the Constitutional Court. A judge from the Kozloduy District Court approached the Constitutional Court with a request to declare the new provisions in the law unconstitutional. “This attempt failed and the facility opened again”, states Stancheva.
NPP started its €255,000 lawsuit against the nurse in July 2023. Luckily, the plant did not support its claim for too long. The new management withdraw it in January 2024. „The lawsuit was filed in July 2023 for bad faith behavior, abuse of rights, dissemination of false information, etc., before the new executive director took office. After becoming acquainted with all the circumstances surrounding the case, the executive director of Kozloduy NPP Valentin Nikolov, after discussion with the principal of the company and the Minister of Energy Rumen Radev, decided to withdraw the lawsuit due to the excessively high amount of the claim. We would like to emphasize that all activities at Kozloduy NPP, including the legally required medical monitoring and medical insurance, are carried out in strict compliance with the regulations“, said NPP Kozloduy in a written statement upon the withdrawal.
The withdrawal of the lawsuit against Stancheva came after a number of organizations in Bulgaria reacted to the case. Nuclear Transparency Watch organized a protest in front of the Ministry of Energy in Stancheva’s defense. Access to Information Program and the Association of the European Journalists in Bulgaria issued a statement in which called Kozloduy NPP to drop immediately its legal claim against the nurse. The organizations addressed also the Bulgarian Energy Holding, which is the principal of the Kozloduy NPP, and the Ministry of Energy, which is in charge of controlling the company.
„The record-high compensation claim against Stancheva, is an extreme example of a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation), in which the Bulgarian state is trying to prevent a citizen from exercising her right to freedom of expression“, wrote AEJ in the statement. They added that it was “absolutely unacceptable for a state institution to SLAPP citizens who have exposed wrongdoings. The main function of a nuclear power plant is to provide electricity for the local and regional consumers and not to spend public funds on disgraceful lawsuits“.
„The huge amount of compensation that a state company was seeking was really worrisome. The case was a classic example of a SLAPP indeed that does not pursue a legitimate goal, but instead, aims to silence activists or journalists”, the lawyer Kashumov believes. “The article 45 of the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria stipulates that citizens have the right to complaints, proposals and petitions to the state authorities. Article 56 stipulates that every citizen has the right to protection when their rights or legitimate interests are violated or threatened”, he reminded.
Kashumov believes that the Bulgarian Constitution is not the only one, which protects Nataliya. There is yet another law, which gives her the right to receive information. „According to the Law on Access to Public Information and the international human rights treaties citizens have the right to freely disseminate information in a democratic society. The practice of the European Court of Human Rights has granted protection of the access to information for the purpose of dissemination by journalists, non-governmental organizations or citizens under the European Convention on Human Rights“, explains Kashumov.
According to him the fact that Stancheva was an employee of state-owned company such as Kozloduy NPP puts her in a position to report irregularities, giving her special protection under EU law. “A number of media published information about Nataliya’s case, state authorities took measures. This means that her signals were not unfounded”, Kashumov says.
The NPP withdrawal of the lawsuit against Stancheva sounded like a triumph of justice. But she could not be happy for a long time about the victory and justice she had been waiting. She became in debt of 15 000 Bulgarian leva (around €7500) because the Supreme Court of Cassation refused to recognize the full legal costs incurred for her defense. In December 2024 the AEJ in Bulgaria announced a campaign to collect money to help the nurse to pay her legal expenses for the case. The campaign raised about 11 000 Bulgarian leva.
Stancheva could not feel happy also when yet another lawsuit restored her as an employee in NPP in July 2023 after she was fired in March 2022. “The court ruled that I was unfairly fired and restored my employees’ rights. Now I am feeling like a thorn in the heel here”, she bitterly explains.
The civil organizations and media who attracted attention to Stancheva’s case were not the only one, which raised a voice in her defense. She got a protection under the Bulgarian Whistleblowers Protection Act, which entered into force on 4 May 2023, transposing the European Whistleblowers Directive 2019/1937.
Stancheva approached the Commission for the Protection of Personal Data (CPPD) in Bulgaria – the national authority designated to provide protection under this Act, on January 2nd 2024. She was seeking protection for something that she publicly disclosed.
The Commission acted quickly. In the very same day they assigned an expert who started working on the case. On 15 January 2024 Stancheva received a letter from Ventsislav Karadzhov, Chairman of the Commission, stating that the Commission put her under protection. Four days later Stancheva’s husband was put also under protection. The Commission confirmed its engagement to Stancheva’s protection in two other occasions in 2024 when she approached them five times.
Nataliya Stancheva is one of the five people to whom the Commission secured protection between 4 May 2023 and 31 December 2024. Since 4 May 2023 the institution has gotten 137 reports related to the Act. After checking all of them and identifying those, which respond to the scope of the law, they acted accordingly.
The reports which the Commission got in relation with the Bulgarian Whistleblowers Protection Act were almost three times more in 2024 comparing to 2023. This sounds like an indication that the Act started gaining popularity. Despite this, the Chairman of CPPD Ventsislav Karadzhov still sees some gaps in the current Act. “The protection which the Bulgarian Whistleblowers Protection Act foresees, currently is not very effective, due to the fact that the law does not assign an institution to provide a control of its implementation”, said Karadzhov in a written statement prior to this publication. He confessed that “in case of a violation of the provided protection, the Commission does not have legal opportunity to take real follow-up actions, other than to warn the employer not to take retaliatory action against persons who have filed reports or publicly disclosed information about a violation”. There is no provision for administrative-criminal liability in the current law in case of violation of the provided protection. Karadzhov expressed opinion that “such administrative-criminal liability should be provisioned in case of future changes in the law”.
Before approaching the national authority designated to provide protection under the Bulgarian Whistleblowers Protection Act, Stancheva had not heard the world “whistleblower”. She started her fight as a person who used her right to access public information. In September 2023 she received the “Golden Key” award from the Access to Information Program in Bulgaria as “citizen who used most actively his rights under the Access to Public Information Act”.
Three years after she submitted her first freedom of information act request in 2022, Stancheva is convinced that this was the right thing to do.
Nataliya Stancheva receives the “Golden Key” award from the Access to Information Program in Bulgaria in September 2023 as citizen who used most actively her rights under the Access to Public Information Act.
Photo Credit: Access to Information Program Bulgaria
