The agreement between the EU and Turkey reached on March 7 in Brussels regarding the settlement of the refugee crisis continues to be subject to criticism and some EU member states have already strongly opposed the recent agreements. Hungary’s Premier Viktor Orban for instance said that his country would not participate in a plan, where all countries should directly receive Syrian refugees who were previously accommodated on Turkish territory. Cyprus stated that it would not lift its veto on the EU-Turkey accession talks due to concerns that they would reduce the possibility of a new agreement regarding that country’s unification. Bulgaria also questioned the EU-Turkey agreement judging on some official statements ahead of the new EU-Turkey summit.

In a letter to the President of the European Council Donald Tusk Bulgaria’s Premier Boyko Borissov insisted that the European Union should provide for the protection of all external borders with Turkey. In Premier Borissov’s view, the EU should help all frontline countries deal with the refugee flow. Boyko Borissov voiced the stand that the EU should not focus on the protection of the Turkey-Greece border only and that the negotiations between the European Union and Turkey should also cover the EU-Turkey border in the Black Sea. According to observers, Sofia’s demands mean that this country is asking for a guarantee that Turkey would stop the migrant flow to Bulgaria as well, rather than the one to Greece only. Sofia also contends that the abolition of the visa regime for Turkish nationals should not be bound up with dates. It should rather depend on the results of the readmission agreement between the EU and Turkey. Bulgaria is not against the opening of new chapters in the negotiations between Turkey and the EU regarding Turkey’s EU accession bid. However, Sofia believes that the two sides must adhere to the previously established mechanism of negotiations and that the talks should not be influenced by the refugee problem. Otherwise, the negotiation process between the EU and other countries would be discredited.

However, Bulgaria also accentuates on the future control of the EU external borders. At a meeting of the EU Ministers of Interior, the Bulgarian delegation insisted that the protection of the EU external borders must be a shared responsibility. Thus, in a diplomatic language Bulgaria disagreed with the European Commission’s plan, according to which the new European Border and Coast Guard Agency would receive more power at the expense of the national sovereignty during the protection of EU borders, including the EU external borders. Within that context, Sofia is against the idea, according to which the Director of the European Border and Coastguard Agency should be empowered to take decisions on his own. Sofia insists that the EU member states should play a bigger role when the EU decides to deploy European forces at the borders of given member states. Sofia also contends that the future European Border and Coast Guard Agency should not include Schengen members only, but also countries such as Bulgaria and Romania. Otherwise, those countries would become a buffer zone of the EU. Bulgaria’s officials also voiced that stand that the protection of the Schengen Area should not become an absolute priority of the EU at the expense of countries which are also external borders of the European Union.

There are too many pending issues ahead of the next EU-Turkey summit this week. The problems are too complicated and we can’t expect that the issues would be resolved immediately. This is so, because Europe faces such kinds of problems for the first time. That is why they should be solved through a new common European policy, which would be to the interest of all countries involved in the refugee problem.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov