Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who is paying a working visit to Bulgaria, inspected the Bulgaria-Turkey border, which is an external border of the European Union. Karl Nehammer is visiting the country at the invitation of Bulgaria’s Head of State Rumen Radev. "We are proving on a daily basis that we are guarding the EU's external borders better than a number of countries in the Schengen Area", Rumen Radev said.

“The migrant pressure on the Bulgarian border has increased dramatically in the past year and the migrants' actions are becoming more aggressive”, President Radev said and added that quite many of the migrant smugglers detained across Bulgaria are citizens of other EU member states.

Chancellor Nehammer noted that the migrant flow into Europe is a joint problem and Bulgaria and Romania should not be left alone to deal with guarding the EU's external border. In this regard, Karl Nehammer promised that he would call on the European Commission to allocate EUR 2 billion to enhance security along the Bulgaria-Turkey border. It also became clear that Austria had not changed its position on the enlargement of the Schengen area.