Bulgaria’s land border accession into the Schengen Zone would help the country deal with smuggling at the borders as a result of stricter controls that would be imposed by European institutions, Bulgarian Member of the European Parliament (MPE) Radan Kanev, asserts.
He considers Sofia’s ability to deal with smuggling to be weak, SchengenVisaInfo reports.
Kanev argues that the creation of the Schengen external European border is important for his country to deal with these criminal networks, after, according to him; they would face institutions much stronger than the Bulgarian ones, as reported by Fakti.
Our full integration in Europe is extremely important, including from the point of view of dealing with our own organised crime.
Bulgarian MPE said that this also applied to Bulgaria’s accession to the Eurozone, expected to be finalised next year.
Because entering the Banking Union, we already benefit from one supervision over potential bank frauds of the KTB type. However, this does not apply to insurance activities and pension funds. They are not yet under full European control.
Kanev emphasised that the next European Parliament will focus on expanding the European Prosecutor’s Office’s powers, boosting the European Union’s security and defence plans, designing a unified health and pharmaceutical policy, and strengthening European industries.
Crackdown on Smuggling Operations
The accession of Bulgaria to the Schengen Zone by air and sea was officially finished on March 31, however, land border accession is yet to be finalised.
Since river borders are considered as land borders, controls at borders between Bulgaria and Romania on the river Danube continue to remain effective.
A report from AFP notes that since the beginning of this year, authorities in Bulgaria found 52 motors, 49 rubber boats, 755 hand pumps, at the country’s border with Turkey. Besides, authorities also revealed that these tools were used to move irregular migrants across the English Channel.
The report notes that undocumented migrants were mainly brought in on Turkish trucks through the Bulgarian-Turkish border.
In addition, in March this year, a total of 42 people were arrested for smuggling migrants across the Danube river and then towards Western Europe.
The announcement was made by the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, Europol, following a cross-border investigation led by the Romanian Border Police involving also the Bulgarian General Directorate Combating Organised Crime and the German Police.
Recently, the European Parliament called for the lifting of land border controls for Bulgaria and Romania by the end of this year to avoid long queues of trucks at both countries’ land borders.
