Dutch experts from the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee are in Sofia for a series of capacity-building trainings with their Bulgarian colleagues from the General Directorate Border Police in identification of forged documents. The series of trainings will cover officers from all structures of the Border Police and will include train the trainers program, which will enable the local authorities to continue the education independently after the end of the training cycle.

The preparation of the program has been started last year, following a visit of representatives of the Royal Marechaussee to Bulgaria.

“These trainings will increase the capacity of Bulgarian border police staff in document fraud detection. Now, as a fully-fledged member of the Schengen area, the cooperation in securing the outside borders of EU between our countries is of even greater importance”, said Luuk van Os, Acting Deputy Head of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bulgaria. ‘We highly appreciate our years-long cooperation with the Ministry of Interior and look forward to expand it in the future”, he added.

The long-standing cooperation between the Police forces of the Netherlands and Bulgaria has been covering diverse topics, such as police, ethics and human rights, electronic registration of hazardous materials, human trafficking, support processes during the return procedures of migrants, traffic policing and others.

During the opening of the training, the Deputy Director of the Border Police Senior Commissioner Radoslav Kulekov expressed his satisfaction with the launch of the initiative, sharing with the audience that the experts from the National Center for Counteracting Fake and Forged Documents in Border Police worked actively for this to happen during the last year and a half.

“Building up the bilateral cooperation with the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee in this specific area is extremely important for us, especially when we consider that the Bulgarian Centre was established with the example of the Dutch side. After the final accession of Bulgarian in Schengen on 01.01.2025 this initiative appears to be another crucial step in enhancing the existing level of cooperation – aiming to keep the achieved high levels of security for the future.”

Source: Netherlands Embassy in Sofia