The newly-appointed Executive Director of the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (FRONTEX) Fabrice Leggeri paid an official visit to Bulgaria recently. This was one of Leggeri’s first visits to an EU member state and was paid on the eve of the official signing of the trilateral agreement on establishing of Contact Center for Police and Customs Cooperation between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. Perhaps, Bulgaria attracted Fabrice Leggeri’s attention with the fact that this country has been assisting FRONTEX with the fulfillment of specialized operations and that it would send experts to join the agency’s operations in other EU member states in 2015. Mr Leggeri assured his Bulgarian counterparts during the talks that FRONTEX was ready to provide assistance to Bulgaria to deal with the possible increase of the refugee pressure from the Black Sea. Recently Bulgaria’s northern neighbor Romania also warned about a similar danger and FRONTEX itself has ascertained that the traffic of illegal immigrants shifted to the Eastern Mediterranean and has been discussing the possibility to send its own mission entitled POSEIDON which would be in charge of the surveillance of the land and sea borders between Bulgaria and Turkey, Greece and Turkey and Romania and Turkey. Before his visit to Sofia Fabrice Leggeri promised to provide official answer how FRONTEX agency assessed the situation regarding the migratory pressure towards Bulgaria, what projects FRONTEX could fulfill, in order to increase the security along the EU external border between Bulgaria and Turkey, was it planning to send any European teams to guard the Bulgarian-Turkish border, if the situation in the summer of 2015 worsens and was FRONTEX discussing the possibility to provide any technical assistance to Bulgaria to strengthen the security along this border? These are all questions of great significance for Bulgaria. The recent talks in Sofia would help this country find concrete answers to these questions soon.
English Kostadin Atanasov
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