Bulgaria vows to fight mafia on its borders – Euractiv

The Bulgarian government vowed on Thursday to tackle shady and criminal organizations that profit from trade at the borders and tarnish the country’s image.

Caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev ordered the National Tax Service and the counterintelligence service, the State Agency for National Security (SANS), to start checks on companies operating buffer parking areas for trucks along the borders with Turkey and Romania.

Two days ago, Bulgarian transport organizations announced that their colleagues from Greece and Turkey wanted to organize a diversion around Bulgaria due to the transport chaos in the country.

“Due to the tension at the borders, Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev convened an emergency meeting of the Council of Ministers and ordered checks to clarify the situation in the short term and take measures to normalize border crossings,” the Bulgarian government news agency said on Thursday.

The problem with the buffer parking garages, which are run by companies with ties to shady Bulgarian business figures, has been going on for more than a year, but so far the government has shown no sign of taking action.

At key points, freight traffic bound for Turkey and Romania is diverted to paid parking lots with traffic lights, and drivers are then forced to pay €25. So far, Bulgarian police have refused to reveal who installed the traffic lights and why. People in the transport industry point out that the parking lots are run by business interests.

“The state has completely abandoned the organisation and management of traffic at border crossings. It has placed this task entirely in the hands of dubious people,” Yoanna Lalova, vice-president of the European Transport Cluster, an association of road hauliers, told Euractiv’s partner Sega Daily.

“The way the work of the buffer parking areas is currently organised does not solve the problems with huge queues of trucks waiting for 20-30 hours, but actually aggravates them,” Lalova said of the international response to the chaos at the border crossings.

Earlier this week, after the forum of the Union of Road Transport Associations in the BSEC region (BSEC-URTA), it was announced that Greece and Turkey are looking for alternative transport routes to bypass Bulgaria due to absurd truck tariffs and long waiting times.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)