I want to assure you that we are extremely prepared for work in Schengen. This was said by the Director of the Main Directorate of the Border Police, Chief Commissioner Anton Zlatanov at the border checkpoint (BCP) "Kulata". He described the official acceptance of our country into Schengen as a historic success.
The acting Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev visited the "Kulata" BCP on the first day of the new year 2025 together with the Minister of Tourism Evtim Miloshev and the Minister of Regional Development Violeta Koritarova and the Director of the Main Directorate of the Border Police Chief Commissioner Anton Zlatanov.
We have studied the entire foreign experience of all the countries that have gradually entered the Schengen area before us. They have also made mistakes. We have studied their mistakes. Our border police and the Ministry of Internal Affairs have been subjected to incredible pressure from inspections, control, and monitoring in recent years. The “Border Police“ has been inspected many times in recent years, which has made it in the best condition and at the highest European level, said Chief Commissioner Anton Zlatanov.
He explained that in recent days, organizational measures have been taken by all institutions at all border crossings with Greece to facilitate easier crossing.
“In the first days, we will support the process of crossing the border. That is, in the area of the border checkpoint there will be border police officers to assist traffic, to select suspicious vehicles, since our main task is to implement successful compensatory measures and to take care of both the movement of tourists and citizens, as well as the security of all our citizens in our country“, Commissioner Zlatanov also said.
“The comfort that we had so far to check at border checkpoints for as long as we needed and to carry out all kinds of selections and thorough checks, we no longer have and we will have to work under a completely different organization. We will work in the border zone. It is 30 kilometers around the border of Bulgaria along all our borders. On the internal borders, which are Greece and Romania, this 30-kilometer zone on all roads will have border police detachments, who will carry out checks on cars, trucks and vans,“ the director of the “Border Police“ also explained.
He also announced that at the beginning the checks will be carried out randomly, which means that any citizen can be stopped. The next level of checking is a risk analysis, in case of information that a vehicle or citizen poses a potential danger.
The purpose of the checks is to counteract crime, illegal migration, drug and human trafficking. Chief Commissioner Anton Zlatanov explained that these road checks guarantee the country's security.
Zlatanov announced that the status of all employees at the border checkpoints will be preserved.
„In the beginning, we will not make hasty, abrupt movements, because in order for the work to be of high quality and effective, we will reorganize it smoothly and gradually, reorganizing month after month. Naturally, the people who will not work at the border checkpoints will work inland, in this 30-kilometer zone. We will have one percent of staff that will be redirected to our external borders, mainly with Turkey and Serbia. The number of border police officers' missions to these external borders will also increase, but in general, we do not plan to violate the social status of the employees. For citizens, entering Schengen is an ease, but for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, not only for the "Border Police", but also for all other operational-search structures, this is a difficulty, since we must carry out control in a new way that does not hinder people, but only criminals, said Chief Commissioner Anton Zlatanov.