"Austria ranks highly Bulgaria's efforts to protect the external border of the European Union", said the chairman of the upper house of the Austrian parliament, Wolfgang Sobotka. He visited the Bulgarian-Turkish border at the invitation of the Speaker of Parliament, Rosen Zhelyazkov, in an attempt to convince Austria to give the green light for Bulgaria's admission to the Schengen area without border checks by the end of the year.

Austria, along with the Netherlands, still opposes it on the main grounds that, amid migrant pressures in Europe, more controls are needed.

At the Bulgarian-Turkish border, the Austrian guest was presented with data on over 150,000 successfully prevented attempts to enter the country illegally.

On the 316th pyramid of the obstacle facility, Wolfgang Sobotka got familiar with the way of guarding the Bulgarian-Turkish border. The deputy director of "Border Police", Radoslav Kulekov, explained that migrants try to cross in different ways:

"Migrants are extremely aggressive and try to overcome the fence in any way - mostly in two ways: either by cutting holes in the fence itself, or by using ladders to try to jump over it".

110 kilometers of the border are without video surveillance and are to be covered with cameras.

Wolfgang Sobotka stated that he highly appreciates the work of the Bulgarian border authorities: "Bulgaria is an extremely important partner for us and we expect Turkey to fulfill its obligations as well."

National Assembly Speaker Rosen Zhelyazkov said: "The numbers that were mentioned, I regret to say, are impressive, because these thousands of attempts that have been prevented actually show that the challenge is huge and it is a pan-European commitment to guard the borders."

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