A total of 267 Bulgarian children are eligible for adoption by foreigners, Margarit Ganev, Deputy Minister of Justice and chair of the Council on International Adoption, told a news conference on February 13.
“We have more than 1400 requests from foreign citizens who want to adopt a Bulgarian child,” Ganev said.
However, according to the line set by the European Union, Bulgaria considers the adoption of Bulgarian children by foreigners only as a final option.
“We aim to limit such adoptions abroad since this is EU policy as well,” Ganev said, adding that in 2006, the number children adopted by foreigners was 98. This is a sharp decrease compared with previous years.
Out of the 267 children available for adoption, close to 15 per cent had health problems, which has made their adoption difficult, Ganev said.
Stefan Yordanov, programme officer on child participation and protection at the Save the Children foundation, gave The Sofia Echo a different view.
“The number of children adopted abroad indeed has been going down in the past few years. However, most of these children are either of Roma origin or have serious health problems,” he said.
Yordanov said that the real problem in child adoption in Bulgaria was the Family Code, which was the basis of the legislation. The code was out of date, ineffective and urgently in need of revision.
“There is not a single sentence describing which of the children at orphanages may be put up for adoption and which may not,” he said.
It was well known that many parents left their children in orphanages without officially giving up their parental rights.
This was “simply because they want to take advantage of the social benefits provided by the state without spending money on their children”, Yordanov said. This meant that orphanages were full of children who had living parents.
Foster parenting was another urgent issue, Yordanov said. There was a lack of clarity on the issue. There were currently about 60 foster parents in Bulgaria and there was not a word about the difference between foster parents and adoptive parents.
At present, Bulgarian law says that the intra-governmental Council on International Adoption, comprised of officials from the Labour and Social Policy Ministry, the Education Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the Foreign Ministry and the State Agency for Child Protection is the only authority that deals with adoptions by foreigners.
If a foreigner wants to adopt a Bulgarian child, the first step is to file an application with the Justice Ministry. This can happen through the authority dealing with adoption in the foreigner’s country or through an organisation accredited by the Bulgarian Minister of Justice for the purpose. If the foreigner’s country is not party to the 1993 Hague Convention on child protection and co-operation in international adoption, the foreigner can apply only through the accredited Bulgarian organisation. After the application has been filed, it is included in the relevant register. There are four registers: a register of children eligible for adoption abroad, a register of foreigners who want to adopt Bulgarian children, a register of Bulgarians who want to adopt a non-Bulgarian child abroad and a register of accredited organisations.
The Council on International Adoptions examined applications by foreigners and, if it approves an application, sends a proposal to the Justice Minister. In turn, if the minister approves, further administrative steps are set in motion. These steps include a report on the child, which the Bulgarian authorities send to the authorities in the foreigner’s country. Within two months, the foreigners and the Bulgarian-accredited organisation have to confirm in writing that they want the procedure to continue. The foreigner has to establish direct contact with the child for no more than five days. The procedure concludes with written approval issued by the Justice Minister.
Then the ministry sends the foreigner’s application with the other documents to Sofia City Court, which has 14 days to issue a decision.
