Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees

Foreign nationals have filed 4,267 applications for protection between January 1 and April 5, the head of Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees, Petya Parvanova, has said.

Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees (SAR) has informed about a sudden spike in migratory pressure on the country in 2015.

Speaking at a conference organized by MEP Svetoslav Malinov, SAR Chair Nikola Kazakov said that a total of 11 742 people had applied for protection in Bulgaria by September 23, 2015, compared to a total of 1025 in 2010.

Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees said on Thursday that a total of 52 people have been sent back to the country by the Austrian authorities this year, BGNES reported.

The migrants who held a sit-in protest inside Turkey close to the borders with Greece and Bulgaria last week, demanding passage to western Europe, have been persuaded by the Turkish authorities to go back to the camps they had come from, a Bulgarian official has said.

Nikola Kazakov, Chair of Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees, visited Germany to study the country's experience in coping with the asylum surge.

In a Tuesday interview for the Bulgarian National Radio, Kazakov said that Germany expected around 450 000 refugees in 2015.

Nikola Kazakov, former Chair of Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees, has been reappointed as head of the unit.

Kazakov was reappointed as Chair of Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees during Wednesday's sitting of the government without a competition.

Vasil Varbanov, interim Chair of Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees, has suggested that the entity needs restructuring.

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The refugee center in the western village of Kovachevtsi will be closed, according to Nikolay Chirpanliev, Chair of Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees.

In an interview for Presa daily, Chirpanliev says that the authorities will have to move some 100 people, who currently live there, to other centers.

The number of asylum seekers from Afghanistan has increased more than four times in the last year, Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees told Dnevnik.bg.

Since the beginning of the year, a total of 1397 Afghans have been accommodated in the Agency's centers, while their number in 2013 was 310.

Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees has presented a humble report on its progress in finding jobs for refugees.

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