EU Countries Join Forces to Strengthen Border Security at Bulgarian-Turkish Border
A joint contingent of border security officers from Bulgaria, Austria, Romania, and Hungary will officially begin operations today
Turkey has declared it will consider Bulgarian-issued university diplomas null and void for an indefinite period of time.
Turkey's Council of Higher Education, the institution in charge of accrediting foreign diplomas, defended its decision by saying that the production of counterfeit exam marks and diplomas had reached organized crime proportions.
The document dated July 5, as cited by Bulgarian Trud daily, says that Turkish authorities will not legalize Bulgarian university degrees, transfers from Bulgarian into Turkish universities will not be approved, and the documents already submitted for legalization will be put on hold.
Turkey is voicing suspicions that Turkish students are paying and forging their way through Bulgarian universities without acquiring the respective skills and competences.
As the suspicions echo around the world, the crisis management strategy of Bulgaria's Education Ministry has included two steps: 1) play "uninformed" for as long as possible and 2) when no longer possible, vow checks, inspections, experts' analyses, etc.
While Turkey is spreading the word about Bulgaria being the land of fake diplomas, the institutions in charge are twiddling their thumbs, daring no more than half-hearted interviews for morning broadcasts.
Bulgarian universities are educating some 6000-10 000 Turkish students, according to unofficial reports, with all of them paying several times the fees paid by locals.
However, the major blow will not be a financial one.
If Bulgaria cannot prove it is providing education which is up to international standards, it may as well forget about the much-anticipated lifting of labor restrictions.
Why would any labor market need an unqualified employee?
Why would foreign companies come to do business in Bulgaria if they cannot hire competent staff?
Perhaps Turkey's "No offence, but your education is a fraud" should not get "None taken" as a response. For the sake of all people studying at the country's 51 universities, who do not wish to be seen as criminals by default, just because of the state's passivity.
If we look at history, there are not many cases in which relations between Bulgaria and Russia at the state level were as bad as they are at the moment.
The term “Iron Curtain” was not coined by Winston Churchill, but it was he who turned it into one of the symbols of the latter part of the twentieth century by using it in his famous Fulton speech of 1946.
Hardly anything could be said in defense of the new government's ideological profile, which is quite blurry; at the same time much can be disputed about its future "pro-European" stance.
Look who is lurking again behind the corner – the tandem of Advent International and Deutsche Bank, respectively the buyer of the Bulgarian Telecom Company in 2004 and the advisor of the Bulgarian government in the sweetest deal of the past decade, seem t
We have seen many times this circus which is being played out during the entire week and it only shows one thing - there is no need of a caretaker government in Bulgaria.
You have certainly noticed how many times President Rosen Plevneliev used the phrase “a broad-minded person” referring to almost every member of his caretaker government.
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