At the height of summer the influx of immigrants towards Bulgaria through the Bulgarian-Turkish border has increased. Just for the past month the number reached 600 people. The total number of illegal immigrants has now reached over 13,000 and about half of them are Syrian refugees. Recently Germany wanted to return some 3000 immigrants back to Bulgaria, despite the fact that it is the poorest country in the EU and the situation could become worse.

Under European legislation, refugees remain in the first EU country they manage to reach and where they obtain refugee status. These are the countries with external EU borders, such as Bulgaria, while the aim of most refugees is to reach Western Europe.

Bulgaria has so far managed to cope with the new influx of refugees, but the situation seems similar to last year’s but now it threatens to become critical. Radio Bulgaria asked outgoing Deputy Prime Minister and Mnister of Internal Affairs Tsvetlin Iovchev whether additional measures were needed:

"Currently no additional measures are necessary. Experts keep constantly analyzing the situation and change the location of border authorities as well as methods for combating illegal immigration. Currently we manage to keep the processes under control. Furthermore, the effectiveness of our work is much better now. Authorities now work much faster when providing refugee status or ousting illegal immigrants. Currently the situation is not critical but processes must be closely monitored because migration pressure on Bulgarian borders has greatly increased. The situation in the Middle East and Afghanistan continues to be complex. This leads to an increase of this migration pressure. Many of the refugees arrive to Turkey which also experiences difficulties. The influx of immigrants has decreased a bit, but it is not what we want it to be. The border fence built in key areas along the border helps us a lot. But because of the rising pressure, we cannot cope with all the refugees at the border. So, at the moment we continue to sustainably manage processes in accordance to the intensity of refugee pressure. Currently Bulgaria can cope with some 1000 refugees per month.”

At the backdrop of continuing instability in the Middle East, Northern Africa and Ukraine, countries with external EU borders such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Malta and Italy keep pointing out the need for sharing the burden of refugee waves by all Member States, as capabilities and the country's GDP are also taken into account. This can be done by changing the so-called Dublin Agreement, which establishes the rules for the integration of illegal immigrants to Europe. However, specific policies to support only the Mediterranean countries have been discussed so far which puts Bulgaria at even greater risk in the near future.

English: Alexander Markov