Bulgaria Licensed Surveillance Exports to Rights Violators | Human Rights Watch
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Human Rights Watch
Bulgaria Licensed Surveillance Exports to Rights Violators
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Bulgaria Licensed Surveillance Exports to Rights Violators
EU, Member States Should Tighten Controls
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© 2026 Glenn Harvey for Human Rights Watch
(Brussels, June 18, 2026) – The Bulgarian government between 2018 and 2023 licensed exports of surveillance equipment to countries that were likely to use it for internal repression or to commit serious human rights violations, Human Rights Watch said today.<br>Human Rights Watch previously reviewed data that shows that European Union governments often seem to issue such licenses. Human Rights Watch urged EU institutions to tighten enforcement of laws intended to restrict the export of surveillance technology to places where there is a credible risk it would be used in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law.<br>“All EU governments should be clamping down on exports of tools that can be used for repression, not rubber-stamping them,” said Zach Campbell, senior surveillance researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The European Commission has evidence that EU governments have been issuing licenses seemingly without conducting serious human rights due diligence, and yet appears to have taken no action despite having the legal framework to control this.”<br>Human Rights Watch reviewed documents that show the surveillance company, Circles, based in Bulgaria, was granted licenses to legally export telecommunication interception systems, communications monitoring software, and other types of surveillance technology to countries that have well-documented histories of using similar tools to spy on journalists, activists and to otherwise crack down on dissent.<br>Human Rights Watch wrote to Circles for their comment and for further information about their licenses on April 15, April 23, and May 21, and June 10, 2026, but received no response. Human Rights Watch correspondence with the Bulgarian authorities in April 2026 about their licensing practices is available on its web site.<br>The documents in question are export licensing records from 2018 to 2023, each valid for one year, from the Bulgarian government’s Interdepartmental Commission for Export Control and Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. This is the Bulgarian Ministry of Economy and Industry’s body responsible for approving or denying export license applications from companies located in Bulgaria. Human Rights Watch has not had access to documents relating to exports for 2025 or 2026.<br>The documents describe licenses for exports of Circles’ surveillance technology to Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brazil, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Israel, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Panama, Serbia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Clients included intelligence services, military and police bodies, regional governments, and private companies.<br>These licenses allowed legal exports of cybersurveillance technology, although they do not reveal whether the technology was actually exported. Nonetheless, issuing the licenses demonstrates a major flaw in how individual governments implement EU export controls for surveillance technology. The controls are intended to limit exports of surveillance technology to destinations where there is a likelihood it could be used to violate rights, and to provide transparency about what exports take place.<br>Member states are obliged to take into consideration the human rights record of a destination country. when assessing an export license application. They should exercise special caution when there are human rights risks, and not grant a license if there is a clear risk that the export would be used for “internal repression.”<br>A Human Rights Watch report published on May 12, analyzed these EU controls and found that EU member countries were still exporting surveillance technology to rights violators across the globe. These new documents provide further evidence that the European Commission, which oversees and implements the law, is failing to achieve that goal.<br>Circles is a surveillance company, originally based in...