No increase in migration pressure on Bulgaria – Interior Minister
There is no current increase in migration pressure on Bulgaria, Interior Minister Roumyana Buchvarova said on August 21, speaking against a background of significant crises around influxes of migrants in the region, from Macedonia to Greece.
Buchvarova attended a scheduled meeting on the migration situation, along with Prime Minister Boiko Borissov, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov and the head of Bulgaria’s State Agency for Refugees, Nikola Kazakov.
She said that in spite of the situation in neighbouring countries, and the measures that those countries were taking, “our assessment so far is that there is no increased migratory pressure on our country”.
This did not mean that Bulgaria was not considering various preventative measures to guarantee the safety of the country and its citizens, Buchvarova said.
One such measure was to discuss with Bulgaria’s military the possibility of joint organisation and actions to secure the borders with Greece and Macedonia, she said.
Buchvarova said that the meeting considered the possibilities of deploying Bulgarian military personnel to strengthen and improve prevention at the borders with Greece and Macedonia.
Extending additional funds had not been on the agenda, she said. This was confirmed by finance minister Goranov.
“Citizens should not be worry about anything. We observe all processes, analyse all information and take actions,” Buchvarova said.
Kazakov said that the refugee flow into Bulgaria was double that of the same time in 2014. Bulgaria’s refugee centres were at 68 per cent capacity. Currently, there were sufficient funds to cope, he said.
He said that the procedure for processing new migrants was decentralised and there was no concentration of refugees in central Sofia.
“We sharply speeded up the procedures for providing asylum to refugees,” Kazakov said.
He said that there was no information that refugees were redirecting from Macedonia to Bulgaria.
