site.btaMigrants Are Reluctant to Stay in Bulgaria, System of Insentives and Restrictions Is Needed to Change That - Deputy Interior Minister

Migrants Are Reluctant to Stay in Bulgaria, System of Insentives and Restrictions Is Needed to Change
That - Deputy Interior Minister

Sofia, September 17 (BTA) - Migrants are reluctant to stay in Bulgaria and the European Union needs to think of a system incentives and restructions to change this, according to Bulgarian Deputy Foreign Minister Filip Gounev. He was speaking here Thursday during a debate on the migrant crisis held as part of the European Debates initiative.

During the past six months, the Bulgarian Border Police has detaind close to 19,000 migrants but very few of them remain in this country, said Gounev. "The attitude of the protection-seekers has changes from previous years. Now they are reluctant to stay and get protection in Bulgaria."

Gounev said that the migrant accommodation centres "have emptied to the levels of the days back when they were built". "They are half-empty even though some 1,500-2,000 persons go through them every week. The migrants leave without even applying for [refugee] status. In previous years these people not only filed applications but waited to obtain their protection status. Things changed dramatically this past month and the whole European system of external borders and protection is put to question."

Gounev said that sharing the burden and the responsibility is important but the European Commission has not said how it will happen. He argued that the migrant relocation keys are fair only to a degree because they are based on four criteria only - but at least they partly reflect reality.

"The question remains about how to keep the free movement of people and at the same time make the protection seekers stay in countries where they obviously donТt want to stay," the Deputy Minister added.

In his words, out of some 20,000 migrants who have entered Bulgaria this year, only several hundred will remain here. Even people who are granted refugee status in Bulgaria, move on to Western Europe.

"We need a system of incentives and restrictions to keep these people here but we donТt have an answer from the European Commission as yet about how to do it. A radical change is needed of the European directives," Gounev said.

He believes that another solution is sharing the responsibility for protecting the EU external border. "Having 30 FRONTEX officersw on our border against 7,000 Bulgarian border officers is not adequate sharing of the burden," Gounev said.

He added that a discussion is under way on common border control but this is a complex project and is unrealistic to expect things to happen fast. MORE