Authors:
- Bulgarian Helsinki Committee
In 2024, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (FRONTEX) renewed its presence in the country with a new team of 230 officers deployed in March. The majority of these teams were deployed to participate in joint border patrols along the main borderline with Turkiye. Unlike the deployment of FRONTEX teams in previous years, this time the joint patrols were positioned not only along key transit routes to Serbia (I-8) or Romania (I-9) but also along the land (green) border. This coincided with increased external control measures, implemented by the Turkish authorities on their side of the border, following extensive bilateral meetings in late 2023 and early 2024.
Between December 2023 and April 2024, border posts of Türkiye were gradually deployed along the entire border zone. In addition to installing surveillance devices, physical checks of vehicles and people traveling on all major and secondary roads to Bulgaria were introduced and applied. Border cooperation with Turkish and Greek services was visibly enhanced, both through the trilpartite contact center established in 2016 on Bulgarian territory at “Kapitan Andreevo” crossing point, and through weekly meetings at the regional directorate level.
Against this backdrop, the total number of people identified by the Ministry of Interior as “those who voluntarily returned to the interior of neighboring countries” significantly decreased (previously reported as “prevented entries”). By 31 December 2024 the MoI reported a total of 52,534 people as having “voluntarily retuned to the interior of neighbouring countries”2, which represents a 70% decrease in attempted entries in 2024 compared to 178,698 in 2023.
Version in Bulgarian: 2024 Annual Border Monitoring Report_BG final.pdf
