President Rumen Radev credits his office with merits for accepting us air and water in Schengen, which there is none. This is what former interior minister Kalin Stoyanov wrote on his Facebook profile.
The occasion is the statement of the head of state that during the time of Galab Donev's office, Bulgaria and Austria launched a pilot project to protect our border with Turkey, which is outside the EU.
Kalin Stoyanov, however, points out that our reception in Schengen was due to the fact that the Border Police has repeatedly improved its work on controlling migrant pressure after he took the post of interior minister. He expressed hope that we will be accepted by land by the end of the year.
Here is his entire post on "Facebook":
I listened with bewilderment to the speech of President Radev from New York, who spoke on the subject of Schengen. A subject that during his administrations was a mirage.
I will just remind you that under Radev's official government, with Prime Minister Galab Donev and Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev, in December 2022. Bulgaria was totally blocked for any Schengen-related negotiations and no pilot projects could change this circumstance. The reason for this was precisely Demerdzhiev's failure to deal with the migrant pressure. Please do not give credit where there is none!
Negotiations for Bulgaria's membership in the Schengen area started again after, under my leadership, the Ministry of the Interior and, in particular, the Border Police, mastered the migrant crisis. While I was a minister, I had the assurance and the word of the people on whom our acceptance into Schengen depends, when and exactly how this will happen, within the current year.
I no longer have direct observations, but I strongly hope that my colleagues will continue the line of work that we have been following and that the abolition of land border control will become a fact by the end of this calendar year.