Marie-Christine Vergiat: The Teaming Between Bulgarian and Turkish Border Guards is Disturbing

From 12 to 14 February, MEPs from the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs in the European Parliament were in Bulgaria with the objective of obtaining first-hand information on the ongoing Frontex operations at the Bulgarian land border with Turkey. Frontex supports Bulgaria in border checks and intelligence gathering at border crossing points, border surveillance, the gathering of information and in screening, fingerprinting and registration of migrants. MEPs visited the region of the border crossing point of "Kapitan Andreevo" at the Bulgarian-Turkish border where these activities are undertaken. They also met with relevant stakeholders including Bulgarian authorities (Ministry of Interior, Bulgarian Border Police, International Coordination Centre), international organisations and NGOs.inspected the Captain Andreevo border checkpoint at the Bulgaria-Turkey border.

Marie-Christine Vergiat, Confederal Group of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left, led the mission consisting of the following members: Tanja Fajon (S&D, Slovenia), Judith Sargentini (Green/EFA group, Netherlands, Jaromir Štětina (EPP, Czech Republic), Emil Radev (EPP, Bulgaria) and Filiz Hyusmenova (ALDE, Bulgaria).

Asked yesterday (19 February) to describe the mission, Vergiat told this website:

"Our mission was to oversee the joint missions in which Frontex is involved. The Bulgarian authorities have been helpful and we have met with a large number of stakeholders with whom we were able to discuss issues in a sufficiently open way. One thing that has disturbed us is that the authorities for the control of borders and the authorities in charge of migration issues are not the same. We met people who wanted to prove to us, Europeans, that they...