Refugee pressure on the Bulgarian border with Turkey continues. The refugee centers in Harmanli, Pustrogor, Lyubimets and Sofia are full with refugees from the Middle East. Most of these people are looking for asylum but they do not see future in poor Bulgaria and look for ways to reach Western Europe.

A group of illegal immigrants tries to cross the Bulgarian-Turkish border in the hardly accessible region near Elhovo. The border police see them thanks to their special cameras, arrest them for violating the state border and send them to the regional directorate in Elhovo. After the identity of the people is confirmed, they are transferred to the refugee centers where they need to wait until a decision regarding their status is reached. The situation described above repeats on a daily manner along the southern Bulgarian border. That is why refugee centers are situated there. Dimitar Slavov, a lawyer from the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee has been helping refugees with legal advice and support in the center in Harmanli since the start of the conflict in Syria.

"Until last year there were just tents in Harmanli with no electricity, water, medical care,” Dimitar Slavov recalls." “But eventually things got better. Every day some 30 people come here. Just their registration with the help of two interpreters takes a lot of time. At the same time pressure is high - 2150 people came here last month."

Despite the visible improvements in the Harmanli center, refugees are not satisfied. They complain mostly about the long time the procedure for approval or rejection of their applications for refugee or humanitarian status takes. The new director of the center Marko Petrov knows all 1760 refugees in it. 90% of them are Kurds from Syria. Many of them fled with their families.

"They also complain about the lack of room. Sometimes two families live in one room. We aim to place just one family in a room but sometimes this is impossible. Every day some 80 to 100 people come here.”

Bulgaria is on the way of the refugee flow from the Middle East to Western Europe. This obviously continues to be a challenge to Bulgarian authorities that have not been prepared for such an influx.

"Bulgaria cannot handle the current refugee pressure on our border with Turkey,” says Stoyan Stoyanov, head of the Regional Directorate of the Border Police in Elhovo. "It is a joint European problem and we must seek a solution together. The EU was created in order for members to help each other. Currently, the burden is placed on the members with outer EU borders like Bulgaria, Greece and Italy, where the pressure is the highest."

The main problem for Bulgarian authorities is that refugees cross the border illegally. According to Stoyan Stoyanov, the reason is that these refugees travel without passports. But Illegal border crossing is a crime and predetermines the relatively long procedure of checking their identity and deciding whether to grant protection.

"According to our information, this refugee flow is completely organized," says Stoyan Stoyanov. "The services of Turkish traffickers are used and a number of Turkish citizens, as well as refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries are involved in the business. Almost all refugees pay money to organized criminal groups. And the main concentration of these traffickers is in Istanbul and big cities close to the Bulgarian-Turkish border. All this costs a lot of money and that is why such services are promoted among illegal immigrants,” Stoyan Stoyanov says.

English: Alexander Markov