Faeser in Bulgaria – Barbed wire at the EU’s external border
Published: Monday, Apr 15th 2024, 17:50
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Five days after the adoption of the EU asylum reform in the European Parliament, Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) has traveled to Bulgaria to discuss issues relating to future EU external border protection. On her arrival in the southern Bulgarian city of Plovdiv on Monday, Faeser was received by her counterpart, Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov, who then accompanied her to the Bulgarian-Turkish border.
The Kapitan Andreevo border crossing, which the politicians are visiting, is one of the places where it will be decided whether the compromise negotiated in Brussels will work in practice or not. Faeser says that a pilot project is to be set up here to test how the new EU asylum rules are implemented.
Bulgaria's 259-kilometre-long external EU border with Turkey on the mainland has been fully protected by a double barbed wire fence and monitored with thermal imaging cameras since 2017. Despite this, migrants often cross it with the help of smugglers. The border guards Faeser meets in Bulgaria explain that the aim is to gain time in order to arrive in time and prevent irregular border crossings.
The aim is therefore to stop the many people who repeatedly place ladders against the fence between fields of grain and bumpy dirt tracks and lay blankets over the barbed wire in order to climb over unharmed. Sometimes tunnels are also dug under the fence, they say. This is about "prevented attempts", not illegal "pushbacks", emphasizes the head of the Bulgarian border police, Anton Zlatanov.
Faeser's long-planned visit to Bulgaria comes at a time when the south-eastern European country is in the midst of a political crisis. Bulgaria has had a transitional government since last Tuesday and will elect a new parliament for the sixth time in three years on June 9.
Number of asylum applications in Germany fell recently
According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, 329,120 people applied for asylum in Germany for the first time in 2023, around 50% more than in the previous year. Most of them came from Syria, Turkey and Afghanistan. In the first quarter of this year, 65,419 first-time applications were made, around 19 percent fewer than in the same period last year. One reason for the decline may be the stationary border controls at the borders with the Czech Republic, Poland and Switzerland, which Faeser ordered in mid-October. According to her, the border controls have since resulted in more than 700 smugglers being arrested and 17,600 unauthorized entries prevented.
According to the EU border protection agency Frontex, fewer migrants have recently arrived in the European Union via the so-called Western Balkans route and the central Mediterranean. At the same time, the number of arrivals via the eastern and western Mediterranean routes has increased.
Bulgaria was due to join the Schengen area on March 31, but only with freedom of border control for air and sea borders. There is no timetable for the introduction of Schengen rules at land borders. Faeser says that Bulgaria has fulfilled the necessary criteria, so it would be "logical" to apply the Schengen rules in full. This goes down well with her host.
Preparations for new EU asylum borders to be made quickly
Preparations are now to be made at the EU's external borders so that the rules of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, which was agreed after years of dispute, can take effect in two years at the latest. Among other things, the reform provides for asylum applications from people from countries of origin with an EU-wide recognition rate of less than 20 percent to be examined in reception centers at the external borders.
Such an asylum center as a pilot project financed by the EU Commission is in preparation in Bulgaria, says Faeser. When asked about reports that migrants arriving in Bulgaria from Turkey are being sent back and beaten, the Bulgarian Interior Minister says that these are "isolated individual cases". The problem has largely been solved. Faeser emphasizes that the deployment of Frontex is important to her. The EU border protection agency ensures "that action is taken in accordance with the rule of law".
Some of the new EU regulations adopted are directly applicable. In order to implement the new EU asylum directives, national laws in the member states will have to be amended in the near future.
©Keystone/SDA
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