- The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Bulgaria's failure to institutionalize same-sex unions violates the right to respect for family and private life.

- Bulgaria is the next country after Italy, Ukraine, Romania and Russia to be forced by the ECHR to institutionalize same-sex unions. 

- The Court leaves states free only to choose the form of institutionalization - same-sex unions do not have to be called "marriages."

The SSM discourse is working hard to establish the idea that EU Member States that do not legally recognize the same-sex marriages being contracted in another EU Member State, commit “serious violations of one of the fundamental EU principles – freedom of movement of citizens”. Clearly the intention of this argument is to convince the politicians and the general public that the free movement of persons requires the possibility that “every” family (defined as every kind of partnership), shall be able to move together in the EU.