site.btaTourism Minister, Deputy Foreign Minister Discuss Tourism Sector Support Measures

At a meeting here on Wednesday, Tourism Minister Evtim Miloshev and Deputy Foreign Minister Maria Angelieva discussed measures taken by the Foreign Ministry to facilitate the work of consular offices in third countries, which receive numerous requests for the recruitment of labour in Bulgaria and visas for the purpose of tourist visits, the Tourism Ministry said.

"We are actively working to obtain funding from the Ministry of Finance to provide additional consular officers to serve a larger number of nationals at our priority consular offices in Delhi, Istanbul, Edirne, Bursa, Doha, Jakarta, Tashkent, Dubai, Cairo, Riyadh," Angelieva said, adding that in recent years the volume of work in these consular offices has increased enormously because of the desire of citizens from these countries to work from Bulgaria or to visit the country for tourism.

In connection with the suspension of the National Visa Information System (NVIS) from 9 to 18 August this year due to the commissioning of a new version of the system, directly related to Bulgaria's readiness for accession to the Schengen area, the Deputy Foreign Minister said that applications for the issuance of temporary passports in urgent cases will be accepted and certification of powers of attorney and declarations will be made in urgent and humanitarian cases - natural disasters, urgent travel related to illness or death of a close family member and cases of The suspension of the system will temporarily hinder the acceptance of applications for visas and Bulgarian identity documents during the five working days specified.

Miloshev confirmed the need for an inter-institutional meeting between representatives of the competent ministries and the State Agency for National Security for a working mechanism for faster and more efficient issuance of visas to third-country workers not only for the next summer season in 2025, but also for the upcoming winter season.

Miloshev and Angelieva also discussed the possibility of an integrated tourism product in the Balkans, which would present the region as a whole, in order to attract tourists from far away destinations. "We have a common history, but we do not have air connectivity," the tourism minister stressed.

He also drew attention to a problem with the degrees of risk that the Foreign Ministry determines and publishes on its website. The Tourism Ministry receives signals from tour operators that the classification of these grades is often not updated on time and this is to the detriment of part of the tourism industry. Angelieva undertook to review and assess country by country, noting the complex security situation in many regions of the world, which is of paramount importance to the Foreign Ministry.