Speaking at the national discussion Access to the labour market in Bulgaria for third-country nationals: challenges and solutions, Deputy Prime Minister Grozdan Karadzhov said that labour shortage is one of the biggest problems the government faces. He described the problem as a 'growing pain of development' because the more developed a country is, the harder it is to find workers, especially for labour-intensive jobs.

“At the moment, I would describe the situation as a huge cry for help from industry and the economy to the government, saying that there is no labour and that Bulgaria is losing its already fragile advantage. This cry has been heard,” he added.

'Without real coordination between institutions, no matter how many changes we make to legislation, the problems will remain unresolved,' said Denitsa Sacheva, chair of the parliamentary committee on labour and demographic policy. She called for more staff to be hired to process job applicants' documents from outside the EU.