/ world today news/ “We spend 53 times more money on refugees than Estonia. For the last year and a half, we spent 6.5 million euros, and the EU allocated us only 10.5 million euros for the entire financial period from 2014 to 2020,” said Iliana Yotova at the working meeting in Harmanli on refugee flows and challenges to our national and local authorities
Bulgaria receives just over 10 million euros in European aid to deal with refugee flows for the entire financial period 2014-2020, and in the last year and a half alone it has spent 6 million euros. “We have to fight against many injustices towards our country,” said Mrs. Iliyana Yotova in the city. Harmanli at the workshop “Refugees – from European strategies to national and local policies”. The meeting is organized by Mrs. Iliana Yotova, who is the vice-chairman of the Commission for Civil Rights, Justice and Internal Affairs. “I initiated today’s conversation with representatives of the European institutions, our state agencies, local authorities and the civil sector, because we are on the eve of the adoption of the new pan-European comprehensive policy in the field of migration,” Ms. Yotova told journalists. She added that it is expected that in about a month, the team of line commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos will propose the new policy to the European Parliament for discussion.
To participate in the conference at the invitation of Iliana Yotova, Ms. Birgit Zipel – coordinator of the Socialists in the European Parliament on refugee policy – and Ms. Marlene Mizzi – a Socialist MEP from Malta, which is one of the most affected by the refugee crisis, arrived pressure member states. Representatives of Europol and the European Asylum Assistance Office (EASO) also arrived to participate in the meeting in Harmanli.
Iliana Yotova outlined three priorities on which she will work in the field of refugees. According to her, the so-called The Dublin legislation of the EU, which damages our country and according to which every refugee is returned to Bulgaria, if he crossed into European territory through our border. The Bulgarian MEP indicated as his second priority the change of Art. 33 of this agreement, which threatened Bulgaria with sanctions when the flow of refugees along our borders was at its greatest. According to this art. 33, it is possible for the European Commission to impose monitoring and even financial fines on a member state if it does not provide sufficiently good living conditions for refugees and does not issue them documents quickly enough. “This is absolute paragraph 22,” said the Bulgarian MEP. “Bulgaria obviously cannot cope with the waves of refugees, because for this purpose we receive very little money from the EU and rely primarily on our own forces. At the same time, someone is thinking of imposing financial fines on us precisely because we do not have enough funds to cover all the requirements of the Dublin Agreement.” Mrs. Yotova also noted that the third and priority is the actual implementation of the solidarity principle, which can be expressed in the introduction of quotas for accepting refugees from all EU member states.
The mayor of Harmanli, Mihail Liskov, supported Ms. Yotova’s priorities and added that Harmanli, where the reception center for refugees is located, needs exactly these actions.
Bulgaria and the Mediterranean will be priority areas in Europol’s work, because traffickers put people through them. Very often, traffickers and channelers are behind the refugee flows – this is a criminal business in which a million is made,” said Europol representative Alvaro Rodríguez Gaya.
The coordinator of the Socialists and Democrats in the EP on matters of security and internal affairs, Mrs. Birgit Zippel, added that it is being discussed where to find additional funding from the already adopted EU budget, especially in connection with emergency situations with waves of refugees. She believes that all European funds, especially the social and regional development funds, should be thoroughly studied and see where a resource can be taken to finance crisis situations related to migration. “The EU is based on the principle of solidarity – all member states agreed to this principle when they joined the Union. This should be reminded of the member states that refuse to accept refugees,” said Ms. Zippel.
Iliyana Yotova added that Bulgaria’s expenses for the waves of refugees are 53 times greater than those of Estonia. Last year, only a few dozen applications for asylum were received there, and in Bulgaria the number is several thousand, while our financial possibilities to deal with the situation remain limited. “These are injustices towards Bulgaria that must be changed,” said Mrs. Yotova.
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