Bulgaria on Monday called for a cut in the proposed migrant relocation and resettlement quotas allocated to the country by the European Commission.

The Commission last month unveiled proposals to relocate 40,000 migrants from Italy and Greece to other EU member states and resettle a further 20,000 across the EU over the next two years.

The Council for European Affairs today adopted Bulgaria’s position on the proposed schemes which will be presented at the meeting of EU’s justice and home affairs ministers in Luxembourg on 15-16 June.

Bulgaria was allocated a total of 788 people under the two schemes.

The government in Sofia will insist that the quotas were allocated according to the capabilities of individual states, taking into account Bulgaria’s geographical position as an external border of the EU subject to strong migratory pressure, according to a statement issued by the government’s press service.

“While Bulgaria supports the relocation and appreciates the efforts of the European Commission to establish an effective mechanism for solidarity, it doubts the proposals are balanced and the allocation mechanism is fair enough,” the statement said.

The Bulgarian government insists the countries on the frontline of migration exposed to constant migratory pressure were allocated considerably smaller quotas than those countries which don’t form part of the EU’s external borders or aren’s subject to such pressure.

Bulgaria also demands that the burden of coping with the integration of migrants was fairly distributed among EU member states

The Bulgarian government believes that “the lack of a common European policy in the area of integration of migrants leads to substantial differences in the capabilities of individual member states” to tackle migratory pressure, according to the statement.

The government also supports the creation of a single point of contact on issues of people trafficking as well as the deployment of European liaison officers on migration in third countries, including a liaison officer of the EU border management agency Frontex in Turkey.

Bulgaria, the poorest country in the European Union, is turning into “the next frontier in Europe’s migrant crisis” after the Mediterranean, according to an article published by politico.eu.

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