Bulgaria Loses Billions Annually Due to Delayed Schengen Membership, Warns Economy Minister
Bulgaria stands to lose approximately BGN 1 billion each year due to its continued exclusion from full membership in the Schengen area
Fifty refugees, accommodated at the notorious Busmantsi detention facility near Sofia, have declared a hunger strike in protest against the ban to leave its premises.
The protesters also complain of slow processing of asylum applications, confined living space, strained relations with the security guards and dilapidated equipment.
They have threatened to take their protest a step further and turn the hunger strike into mutiny if their demands are not met.
Persons accommodated at Registration-and-Reception Centres of the State Agency for Refugees are free to come and go, which is not the case at the Lyubimets and Busmantsi detention centers, where persons pending deportation are also held.
Being a member of the EU but not of the Schengen area, Bulgaria is just a transit county for illegal immigrant.
All asylum applicants in Bulgaria are poor and somewhat confused and the country is rarely their end goal.
Some 1000 persons apply for asylum each year, mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Armenia, Iran, and most recently, from Africa and Syria.
However, on average no more than 10% get political asylum, while the remaining ones may spend years roaming through the local red-tape labyrinths before they decide to head off to Western Europe, often again illegally.
The imperfections of the legal system (one asylum-seeker can file an indefinite number of applications), combined with the insufficient administrative capacity, enable the formation of a community of people without documents whose stay in the country has expired.
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I feel no moral guilt towards anyone. This was stated by Kiril Petkov, answering a question whether he would apologize to the Bulgarian people for violating the Constitution.
Head of the Military Medical Academy (MMA) Major General Prof.
The Ministry of Finance has revised its autumn forecast for economic development.
Bulgarian police arrested a Russian citizen and two Lithuanians on suspicion of exporting “sensitive information” from the Arsenal military plant in Kazanlak.
The government has changed its order requiring state-owned companies to pay a dividend to the budget.
UN Happiness Report: Bulgaria's Astonishing Leap in Rankings
Bulgaria: 3 Regions With Lowest Life Expectancy - EU Report 2022