The current situation at the Greek-Turkish border’s camp at Pazarkule / Kastanies is unbearable. On March 13, 2020, 19 Bulgarian civil society organizations and activists sent an open letter to Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and EC Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, calling for the Bulgarian government and the European Commission to take steps so that Bulgaria uses according to its purpose the already built with European funds infrastructure for the reception of asylum seekers, by receiving on its territory asylum seekers.
In the letter the organizations mention that they are astonished to hear the Prime Minister’s statement from the 10th of March 2020, that Bulgaria is requesting from the EC an additional 130 million euro to handle a (non-existant) migration crisis. The letter also mentions that since 2015 to this day, Bulgaria has received more than 300 million euro from European taxpayers’ money, in order to build its capacity for both border protection and the creation of a functioning system for providing international protection and appropriate reception condition for asylum seekers. The emergency fundig received for this purpose just in the end of 2016 under AMIF and the Internal Security Fund (ISF) amount to nearly 150 million euro.
On the 2nd of March, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov met with Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan in Ankara who assured the Bulgarian president that the Bulgarian border “will remain calm“. The step of Borissov is surprising, because currently Bulgaria’s reception capacity for asylum seekers is 5,160 places in the reception centres of the State Agency for the Refugees (SAR), which are currently occupied at 7% of capacity. The open letter mentions that at the same time, the refugee camps on the Greek islands are filled up to ten times of capacity. It highlights as well that Bulgaria, has not to this moment in time, expressed any readiness to help relieve the situation in Greece by receiving some of these people on its territory and using the reception centres built for this purpose.
Bordermonitoring Bulgaria (BMB) shares the demands and calls on the responsibility of Bulgaria to use the money of the EU for the intention that it was given for.