Bulgaria, the Netherlands partner in field of document fraud identification
Dutch experts from the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee are in Sofia for a series of capacity-building training sessions with their Bulgarian colleagues from the General Directorate Border Police in identification of forged documents, the embassy of the Netherlands said in a media statement on February 10.
The series of training sessions will cover officers from all structures of the Border Police and will include train the trainers programme, which will enable the local authorities to continue the education independently after the end of the training cycle, the statement said.
The preparation of the programme started last year, following a visit to Bulgaria by representatives of the Royal Marechaussee.
“These trainings will increase the capacity of Bulgarian border police staff in document fraud detection,” Luuk van Os, Acting Deputy Head of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bulgaria, said.
“Now, as a fully-fledged member of the Schengen area, the cooperation in securing the outside borders of EU between our countries is of even greater importance”, Van Os said.
“We highly appreciate our years-long cooperation with the Ministry of Interior and look forward to expand it in the future,” he said.
The statement said that the long-standing cooperation between the police forces of the Netherlands and Bulgaria has been covering diverse topics, such as police, ethics and human rights, electronic registration of hazardous materials, human trafficking, support processes during the return procedures of migrants, traffic policing and others.
At the opening of the training sessions, the Deputy Director of the Border Police Senior Commissioner Radoslav Kulekov expressed his satisfaction with the launch of the initiative, saying that the experts from the National Centre for Counteracting Fake and Forged Documents at the Border Police had worked actively in the past year and a half for this to happen.
“Building up the bilateral cooperation with the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee in this specific area is extremely important for us, especially when we consider that the Bulgarian Centre was established with the example of the Dutch side. After the final accession of Bulgarian in Schengen on January 1 2025, this initiative appears to be another crucial step in enhancing the existing level of cooperation – aiming to keep the achieved high levels of security for the future,” he said.
(Photo: Provided)
