site.btaInterior Minister on Illegal Migration Situation at Border with Turkiye

During a hearing at the parliamentary Committee on EU Affairs, the Schengen Area and the Euro Area, Bulgarian Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov reported on the illegal migration situation at this country's border with Turkiye.

Stoyanov described the situation over the last two months as "exceedingly calm". He explained that, as a rule, in past years September and October have been the most active difficult in terms of tackling illegal migration.

Bulgaria has achieved its best results in recent months for a couple of years now not only thanks to the fine communication and interaction with the Turkish side but also due to a reorganization of border protection, a 30% increase of the Border Police officers deployed on the front line, and personnel changes, Stoyanov said.

He said that he had three telephone calls with the Turkish Interior Minister, and together with Director of the General Directorate Border Police, Chief Commissioner Anton Zlatanov and the Interior Ministry political leadership they visited Ankara. It emerged at the meeting there that the two countries interact actively, contacts are being stepped up, and Turkiye had strengthened border protection on its part. "The communication is at a very high level, and our fine cooperation is acknowledged by all partners in Europe," Stoyanov said. "All [EU] Member States, as well as all heads of the services with which we work, say that this is the first time that Bulgarian-Turkish dialogue has been so active," the Interior Minister added. "Carrying on this contact is strategically important for us. They will continue with the strengthened protection on their part of the border, we are doing it in parallel with them, and this has produced results," Stoyanov pointed out. 

"Migrants and traffickers find it ever more difficult to move and cross [the border], which is also our task, considering our aspiration to join Schengen," Zlatanov told the Committee. "Austria claims, among other things, that 123,000 migrants, in their estimate, entered Austria last year. One of our tasks was to do even the unthinkable to reduce this number," he added. Zlatanov said that the number this year is 46,000. "When we last talked, the Austrian Interior Minister said they did not lay claims to us but the Schengen Area with its current members did not function well," the Border Police chief said.

He recalled that the Bulgarian-Turkish border is Europe's busiest land border. "All data of Frontex [the European Border and Coast Guard Agency] show that some 70% of the migrants to Western Europe use the Central European route (via the Greek and Italian islands in the Mediterranean). The other two routes are  the East European route, via the Balkan Peninsula, and the West European route, via Spain, which is used by migrants from Africa," Chief Commissioner Zlatanov explained. As many as 1,500 illegal border crossing attempts daily were foiled this summer, he said.