Former Minister of Interior and Director of DANS Tsvetlin Yovchev commented on the situation with migrants on the Bulgarian borders, as well as emphasized the reason for the claims that Bulgaria will be filled with migrants after our entry into Schengen, Darik Radio pointed out.
„Information that Bulgaria will suffer from emigrants, in my opinion, is more like Russian propaganda, which was intended to hinder the processes of full integration of Bulgaria into Europe. It is unlikely that when we enter Schengen, the pressure on our country will increase and Bulgaria will be filled with migrants. These are absolutely unfounded claims for several reasons.“
„The first is that with our entry into Schengen, control over our border is being strengthened, since there is already help. The second is that there is in no way any greater motivation and interest on the part of illegal migrants towards the Bulgarian border. In no way does entering Schengen change the difficulty on their route to Western Europe“, he explained.
„Migrants mainly aim for those Western European countries whose social systems allow them to easily integrate. Bulgaria is not one of these countries“, he told Darik Radio.
According to him, there are three main routes for migrants to Europe: „The Central Mediterranean and the Western Mediterranean, in terms of the number of migrants entering the EU, are significantly more than the Western Balkan route, which actually passes through Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece. So from this point of view, the pressure on our country, compared to other regions, is not that high and I think that at the moment the Ministry of Interior is managing to cope quite well with this migrant pressure. Of course, there is still something to be desired.“
„There are periodic criminal cases with migrants. For example, the case of a Syrian who was driving a bus, hit two police officers and killed them on the spot in Burgas. This was a much more serious case. We had cases with a truck that was transporting migrants who had run out of air and were suffocating, and they found the truck near Sofia. So there are such serious cases, unfortunately, those that are accidents with fatal consequences. And probably there will be in the future. I don't think this is something that can be used to judge how well our country is dealing with the migrant pressure“, Yovchev specified.
“Technologies can still be used on our border with Turkey and detection capabilities can be technically improved. Other sensors can be deployed on those parts of the border that allow this, because this is not possible everywhere. In principle, the facilities there should be strengthened, massive barrier facilities should be made, there should be sensors that allow detection when approaching the fence and the fence itself should be a much more difficult obstacle to overcome. A lot can also be done in terms of the organization of the activity“, he added.
“A while ago there were intelligence departments at the “Border Police“, which had operational functions – to collect information about persons engaged in plumbing, since the possibilities, when there is such an operational unit, are much greater in terms of both technical means and operational capabilities, and the approach of these units is much different than the only security functions that they currently have.“
„I am skeptical that serious problems can be solved with technology alone. Just as an example, I will give you that there was such a vacillation in such technical intelligence services, which subsequently, after the September 11 attack and other such events - subsequent and preceding - occurred, it became clear that no matter how developed and advanced the technical systems are, they are not sufficient on their own“, believes Yovchev.
„We cannot exclude any of the other components. A lot depends on how prepared our people are, a lot depends on whether we have integrity among these people, a lot depends on whether we have properly organized the work processes. Because, look, it often happens that the employees of the Ministry of Interior are sent to the field without being sufficiently well trained, without having the necessary technical means and without being well led.“
Regarding the verbal battle between the cabinet of Rosen Zhelyazkov and President Rumen Radev over the appointments of key representatives in Bulgarian institutions, he stated:
“I am in favor of the fact that in these appointments there should be shared responsibility between the institutions, since in this way, in some cases, ill-considered or conjunctural decisions can be avoided. But when this approach is applied, in the end we must have representatives of these institutions who are sufficiently responsible and who in their behavior take into account public interests entirely, and are not guided by any conjunctural or personal considerations.“