Around 5800 refugees have attempted to cross the Bulgarian border illegally since the beginning of the year. This was made clear by a presentation of Deputy Director of the Border Police Stoyan Ivanov, during the conference "The Refugee Crisis and the Development of the Migration Processes". For 2016, border pressure was about 7 times higher - over 40,000 impeded attempts to enter Bulgaria.

The peak of refugee pressure was in 2015, when more than 90,000 foreigners tried to enter illegally in the country, "Trud says. In 2014, they were 38,000.

"There is a decrease in the refugee flow towards Bulgaria, but that should not calm us," Tsvetan Tsvetanov, the chairman of the Internal Security Committee, explained. He reminded that Turkey has retained over 4 million refugees in its territory and our country remains at risk. The conference revealed that 1/5 of the capacity of the refugee centers in Bulgaria is currently occupied, which is approximately 1000 people.

"For us, the Presidency of the Council of the EU is a great responsibility and challenge, and we will try to involve the Western Balkans in the Union's refugee policies," Tsvetanov added. For him, the main challenge facing the EU in relation to refugees is how to deal with political populism.

He also commented that legislation on migratory processes needs to be changed to meet the new challenges.

At a conference on migrants, it became clear that 130 refugee children were successfully integrated into schools in the country.