The first round of Turkey’s bargaining with Brussels for containing the migration crisis took place last week. The results were presented by the authorities in Sofia as moderately optimistic. Straight after the summit PM Boyko Borissov said that “talks of EU with Turkey are hard but promising” and repeated his thesis that all EU outer borders should be closed down with only border crossings open for entry. „I believe that we can keep calm for the time being, but we should also remain strongly vigilant”, the prime minister said and added that he had asked Brussels for financing to strengthen border protection. The same tone of voice was heard from Foreign Minister Daniel Mitov but he specified there was an agreement with Turkey and Greece for early warning in the case of threat from migration pressure over the Bulgarian borders. In turn, Interior Minister Rumiana Bachvarova vowed that “all measures were being taken and readiness on the border to react to attempts for illegal organized passage of migrants was being boosted in terms of resources and organization”.

As a demonstration of confidence and border protection, a joint exercise was held last week of border police and the army. Defense Minister Nikolay Nenchev reported it had been successful and said coordination of joint action of the army and the Interior Ministry was excellent. He added that if necessary a fence would be built on the border with Greece. Leaving aside the remark that an exercise with duration of a few hours can hardly prove excellent coordination between the police and the military, we should also point out that talking about a fence on the border with Greece which is a member of both EU and Schengen, is to put it mildly, an exaggeration.

These statements and actions clearly suggest that Sofia tightens the ranks despite assurances that everything is under control migration-wise and that the decision for the closure of the Balkan Route via Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and onwards would thwart the intentions of new refugees to move to Central and Western Europe. It is obvious there are other indications that regardless of shutting down the Balkan Route or more precisely due to its closure, migration waves might redirect to Bulgarian borders. The leader of the liberal ALDE in the European Parliament Guy Verhofstadt who termed bargaining with Ankara the handing over the keys for entering Europe to the heir of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Erdogan, voiced his conviction that with the shutdown of the Balkan Route the soil was being prepared for the revival of routes via the Italian island Lampedusa, Malta, Bulgaria and Albania.

So, what route will refugees take? Where will smugglers take them? We will find out during the second round of EU-Turkey bargaining – on 17 and 18 March. At the first round Turkey came up with three conditions that smell like blackmail: to double financing from three to six billion euro that EU should pay to Ankara for controlling migrants; to allow Turkish nationals to travel visa-free in Europe; to speed up the procedure of Turkey’s accession to EU. Demands that if accepted this way will mean Brussels is down on its knees.

Ankara argues that there are two million migrants from Syria in migration camps on its territory. No one can check whether this is the case. But if EU fails to agree with Ankara and Turkey begins bus shuttles to transfer migrants to the Bulgarian border, a threat that it has already made, it is hard to say how many fences, facilities, police and soldiers will be needed to contain the tornado.

English Daniela Konstantinova