The Customs Agency is now ready for Schengen not only by air and water, but also by land. At the busiest border crossings, cargo traffic will be separated from passenger car traffic.
At airports, passengers arriving and traveling to non-Schengen countries will be separated from others to be screened. There will also be new border checkpoints, the Customs Agency told 24 Chasa.
Mobile x-rays will also be installed to track risky shipments and they are already part of the European excise goods tracking system.
New systems for risk analysis and automatic selection of risky goods and shipments have been introduced. Work is underway to introduce a real-time traffic monitoring system. Over 2,000 cameras record at each checkpoint and are connected to the central server, which has sharply reduced violations and corruption at the checkpoints.
The upcoming admission of Bulgaria to Schengen not only by air and water, but also by land, which, according to Finance Minister Asen Vassilev, is set to happen on January 1, 2025, will change not only the number of checkpoints, but also their functions, they say from customs.
New checkpoints will further ease traffic after 2025. Those on the Bulgarian-Macedonian border are planned: Simitli-Pehchevo and Strumyani-Berovo. Towards Turkey, there will be a pedestrian crossing at Rezovo and the Belevren-Akhlatla crossing.
The first tangible change will be the closing of the checkpoints on our border with Greece and Romania, which means that travel to these countries will become completely free. Airports that are both a Schengen and an internal EU border must separate the flows of departures and arrivals from countries that are in Schengen with those that are not.
Cargo and cruise ships and their passengers will be checked if they come from a country outside the free travel zone, which is currently planned to be done at the passenger terminals in Burgas, Nessebar and Varna.
Border checks will be mandatory for arrivals and departures – cargo, passengers and cars, from and to third countries. Customs checks remain mandatory for everyone by land, air and water if coming from non-Schengen countries.
For all others, the checks will be based on a risk analysis, which is assessed according to several criteria – it depends not only on the country from which they arrive or to which they are going, but also on the goods being transported.
At the border points of airports and ports, instead of border control, there may be sudden police checks. Customs control remains and will continue to include customs clearance of the goods, processing for measuring the mass of road vehicles, the permit regime, vignette control.
Our preparations for Schengen include repairs and modernization of main border crossings.
In 2023, a partial reconstruction of the “Capitan Andreevo” checkpoint was carried out through the construction of two new specialized inbound routes for refrigerated trucks and goods subject to official control by the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency. The investment is for BGN 5 million.
The routes are now equipped with automatic scales and disinfection frames, as well as with all other necessary equipment, speeding up border control.
The increase in the number of entry routes for trucks from 10 to 12, the construction of a second separate site for X-ray checks and a shed over the existing one, as well as the reorganization of traffic increased the throughput of the point and, accordingly, the waiting time for entering the country decreased, Pavel said Tonev, until recently head of customs, and now adviser to the finance minister.
The reconstruction of the “Stanke Lisichkovo” checkpoint, known as the Logodazh customs point, has also begun.
After the completion of its large-scale expansion, the tracks will become three in each direction – two for light traffic and one for heavy traffic in one direction, new areas for disinfection, refrigerated container and X-ray will be built, new cabins, lighting and visor will be installed.
Construction of a new administrative building, halls for thorough customs inspection, sanitary facilities for passers-by, as well as the entire adjacent plumbing and communication infrastructure is to be built.
With the implementation of the reconstruction, in addition to increasing the throughput, a faster processing of heavy traffic will be achieved by bringing together in one line all the control activities under the competence of the “Customs” Agency.
In 2023, the second phase of the reconstruction of the Kalotina border crossing began, which is expected to be completed in the spring of 2024. The goal is to increase the number of incoming and outgoing routes for passenger cars. The second phase envisages the construction of routes for border checks located under a common shelter.
Changes are also taking place in the customs information system – BIMIS. In 2023, it already does cross-border recognition of electronic identities. There is new information processing software. Customs is one of the first institutions in our country to have a private cloud in the public sector.
Customs clearance activities for import, export and transit are now fully digitized.
With the development of IT systems, it was possible to completely eliminate paper documents in the main customs processes, and to serve the operations electronically.
Bulgarian customs are already part of the system for tracking and controlling excise goods and for exchanging excise data. Our country is among the first seven countries of the European Union that introduced simplified electronic procedures for the transport of goods transiting through us.
The implementation of a real-time vehicle control system, as well as automated data and risk analysis to select suspicious vehicles and cargo, is currently underway.
Over 2,000 cameras are operating in all customs offices, for which communication connectivity has been built, which has minimized violations in them.
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