Comment by Emilia Milcheva:
How are the private parking lots on the Danube bridges - at Vidin-Kalafat and Ruse-Giurgevo, different from the grip of “Multigroup” for example, squeezed in the 1990s the Kremikovtsi State Combine at the “entrance” and at the “exit”? The principle is the same - where there is a large and reliable turnover, a private company appears, whose business consists of a monopoly on activity related to the flow of goods and services. The government does not hinder it - on the contrary, it helps and ignores the uncomfortable questions. And the monopoly is not affected by the political situation and there is no risk of competition - examples are the private laboratory and the “golden parking lot” at the border crossing "Captain Andreevo".
The Paralyzed State
The private “buffer” parking lots for shooting ranges - the state has not built any, they do not worry the rulers, despite the negative image they carry for Bulgaria. The Danube Bridge 2 car park has been described as a “money factory” by a Polish driver to the Swiss media SRF, according to which the Bulgarian mafia earns millions of euros from him - collects 15 leva from Bulgarian and 25 euro from foreign drivers. And he directs a traffic light towards him, which shines red in the direction of the bridge and green - towards the parking lot, which forces the trucks to pull over to the parking lot, “assisted” of health workers in black t-shirts. In a report, bTV showed a driver talking about threats to his colleague who did not use the parking lot: “They are taking his license plate and just telling him that he will be in trouble if he does this thing again”.
Pri Vidin is the busiest Bulgarian border point on the internal EU border, followed by Ruse and Kulata - every day over 4,000 vehicles, trucks and cars pass over Danube Bridge 2, most of them foreign, and at many stops they have to wait more than a day. “Since they do not work there at the customs office, if they are going to make a thousand parking lots, that is all…”, says a transporter quoted by BNR.
The private parking lot began to be built in March 2023, when the caretaker government of Galab Donev was in charge, the regional minister was Ivan Shishkov, and it was put into operation in May of this year. - on an area of 70 decares for 550 trucks. But even the PP-DB government with Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov did not object to its construction. According to the Law on Road Traffic, the conditions and order for organizing traffic on roads open to public use are determined by an ordinance of the Minister of Regional Development and Public Works. “The three interconnected objects - a road leading to the Danube bridge Vidin-Kalafat, a road link and a parking lot - were built and put into operation according to the relevant regulatory order”, the Ministry of the Interior answered questions of Deutsche Welle.
Why didn't anyone intervene?
This means that none of the departments that are related to the parking lots - MRRD and API, State Agency “Road Traffic Safety” (DABDP), the Ministry of the Interior - due to the regulation of traffic and safety, they did not consider it necessary to intervene. The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTS) did not do it either - state companies under its umbrella manage the Danube bridges, as well as the traffic lights to them.
Who controls the traffic light that directs the lanes to the buffer parking lot of Danube Bridge 2? According to the response of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to Deutsche Welle, the traffic light system, which is located on the territory of the “Danube bridge Vidin-Kalafat” - the company responsible for the management, operation and maintenance of the bridge was moved after the construction of the road connection with the TIR parking lot. “The place of its installation was determined by the relevant designers and technical persons, who prepared and executed the projects for changing the organization of the traffic, agreed with the owners of the road and the competent authorities”, the answer states. Sirech - the routing is legal and is carried out from the “Danube bridge Vidin-Kalafat”. Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov confirmed it in the parliament: “The management of the traffic light is carried out by the owner of the road, namely “Danube Bridge Vidin-Kalafat AD”.
And the acting Minister of Transport and Communications, Georgi Gvozdeikov, who was in this position and in the office of the PP-DB, defended the buffer parking lots in the parliament - they would eliminate the queues of trucks along the border. In reality, they do not remove anything - the checks on both sides make it difficult to pass and no more than 40-50 trucks pass per hour. In addition, they seize businesses in Vidin and Ruse from companies with parking lots and reduce the competitiveness of Bulgarian entrepreneurs.
"Capital": Golden parking lots in the north and south
A year ago “Capital” and the Anti-Corruption Fund revealed that companies close to one of the heroes of the Bulgarian underground - Razmig Chakaryan-Ami, invest in “gold“ shooting range parking lots. The investigations showed how the schemes in the south are multiplied in the north as well - always in places where the main transit flow of heavy goods vehicles passes. (After the start of the war in Ukraine, this traffic has increased.) In August 2020, at the Svilengrad border, next to “Captain Andreevo” A parking lot for 600 tyres was opened, later another for 100 nearby. At the border crossing "Lesovo" there is another parking lot with 350 spaces for trailers and 75 for cars. Through proxies, the model is transferred to the north, where in 2022 companies close to Ami get a monopoly over parking near Ruse, and a repetition follows at the Vidin-Kalafat bridge, it is clear from the investigations.
On May 27 of this year however, shortly after the commissioning of the buffer parking at Danube Bridge 2, owned by “Danubia Logistics Vidin” with owner Gorancho Cvetkovski, a citizen of North Macedonia, the Municipal Council of Vidin adopted a declaration to the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the District Prosecutor's Office-Vidin about the scandalous situation. Mandatory diversion to buffer parking violates one of the principles of the EU - for the free movement of goods and services. It was stated in statements of municipal councilors from Vidin at their session at the end of May. That is why they asked to check the legality of the mandatory detour to this parking lot and the traffic light located before the Vidin-Kalafat bridge that points to it.
For the Ministry of the Interior, parking is not a problem
To Deutsche Welle's questions, the Ministry of the Interior answered that “there is no agreed organization of traffic with mandatory passage through the parking lot in question”. The Ministry of the Interior does not direct anyone to the private TIR parking lots, Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov recently stated when asked about the parking lot during the parliamentary control. It doesn't target, but it doesn't interfere with targeting either. The established organization of traffic on the road before entering the checkpoint area does not require vehicles to pass through the newly built parking lot, Stoyanov said in the plenary hall. Reality grossly refutes this deviation from the truth.
At the municipal session in Vidin, Valeri Vassilev, a member of the board of the company under the umbrella of MTS, says that “there must be some order of passage - what is happening at the moment is not normal” and calls on the state in the person of the API and the Ministry of Transport to create rules. Asked whether the trucks can cross the bridge without having passed through the parking lot, Vassilev answers: “As the situation is now, it puts them all in the parking lot… Money should not be collected from trucks that are not parked in the parking lot”.
And there are no rules. “I hear about the pressure exerted on the carriers, but the municipality, apart from issuing the building documents, has nothing to do with this process,” the mayor of Vidin, Tsvetan Tsenkov, told the municipal councilors.
The parking lot in Ruse - BGN 600,000 for 29 years
In June the buffer parking, built before the Danube Bridge border crossing near Ruse-Giurgevo, was also operational, for about 700 tyres. Tires also wait 14-16-30 hours to pass. The bandwidth of the so-called Bridge of friendship in one direction is about 2000 trucks in 24 hours, but about 1400-1500 trucks pass. In addition to this flow, nearly 3,000 cars cross the border every day, with traffic almost doubling on holidays and weekends.
But here, too, the slow and cumbersome checks at the EU's internal border slow down the trucks - and increase the revenue of the parking lot built by “Tir Parking Ruse“ Ltd. The municipality of Ruse claims that the shooting ranges are not obliged to use it, but can choose. For foreign trucks, the fee here is also 25 euros. To Deutsche Welle's questions, the municipality of Ruse gave the same answer as they have repeatedly explained - the company won an open competition for the establishment of a remunerative right to build on municipally owned land for a period of 30 years. The company will pay a total of BGN 18.2 million over 30 years for the assigned construction right. Of these, 6% (or a little over BGN 1 million) were paid before signing the contract. The remainder will be paid in 29 equal annual installments, or just under BGN 600,000 per year.
In the AKF investigation “Game in parking lots” the economist Georgi Angelov notes that against the background of the heavy traffic of heavy goods vehicles through the border crossing at Rousse, and the high profit margin, the investment in the project would pay off in a year or two. According to him, the municipality should receive a fixed amount plus a percentage of the profit of the facility or the period of leasing to the private investor should be shortened.
Hinder efforts for a full-fledged Schengen?
And the municipality of Ruse plans to rent out a second buffer parking lot for heavy goods vehicles on Blvd. “Bulgaria“ with 75 truck parking spaces.
With the entry of Bulgaria and Romania into the overland Schengen, the need to stay at buffer parking lots will greatly decrease, as border checks will be abolished. Now the only option to avoid long queues is to apply the relaxed regime of border checks from time to time, but this is not a sustainable solution. The paradox is, however, that the buffer parking lots and their owners may erode the efforts for a full-fledged Schengen.