European Union membership is often described as sharing both advantages and disadvantages of being part of the "club". One pressing issue is the growing number of immigrants coming to Europe from all over the world, most notably via Mediterranean countries such as Turkey and Greece.

Of all the countries who form the first European front against this wave of immigrants, Malta is the smallest and as such faces serious problems. Malta has repeatedly raised the issue at European summits and requested assistance, especially regarding its intake of refugees from North Africa.

Bulgaria, as an EU member, was reminded of this on October 21 during President Georgi Purvanov’s visit to the island when Malta asked Bulgaria to admit a number of refugees currently on its territory. Malta even presented a pilot project to reallocate refugees throughout the EU by which any country willing to accept refugees would receive 4000 euro a person annually from the European Refugee Fund. Purvanov replied that Bulgaria would consider this proposal.

Bulgaria’s position  
Purvanov was powerless to offer an official position because the Presidency wields no authority on this issue. Rather it is up to the executive, in this case the Interior Ministry, to decide. And from what Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov told The Sofia Echo, it seems that Bulgaria’s position is to wait for an EU decision on the matter.  

"The issue of refugees and immigrants is currently at the discussion phase within the EU," Tsvetanov said. "Naturally, if the EU decides in favour of a proposal similar to Malta’s, we will have to comply, but this is still just a proposal." He cited other EU countries, such as Germany and some Scandinavian states, that have already accepted refugees from Jordan and Iraq. Tsvetanov said, however, that Bulgaria was far from ready to abide by Malta’s request to accept refugees from other countries. One reason is that Bulgaria has never had an official policy on refugees.

For examples, only 10 EU states currently have national resettlement programmes for refugees, including the transfer from the first country of asylum to another EU country where they could find security and work. Other EU countries, including Bulgaria, are willing to resettle refugees on an ad hoc basis.

"It is an issue affecting all countries, not just those who form the external EU border," he said. Given that since 2007 Bulgaria is one of these countries, the issue will not go away. However, since Tsvetanov’s main priority is to compensate for Bulgaria’s delay in fulfilling criteria for entering the Schengen free visa area in 2011, the refugee issue seems to have been left entirely up to the EU and its Joint Resettlement Programme. "The two issues, Schengen and the refugee one, should not be linked," Tsvetanov told The Sofia Echo.

Resettlement
The world "resettlement" is familiar to every NGO and human rights worker dealing with refugees and asylum seekers in the EU. The European Commission’s response to the worsening problem was to try to adopt a joint strategy on the issue involving all member states.

Hence, on September 2, the EC put forward its Joint Resettlement Programme to the public. The term has to do with people who try to enter the EU outside normal immigration channels.

Since the EU’s approach to the issue had seemed unco-ordinated, the EC decided to have one joint approach through its Resettlement Expert Group. This group, aided by other international bodies, is to prepare a common annual EU resettlement approach to apply to geographic regions and nationalities as well as specific categories of refugees.

Every EU state will have the right to decide if they want to resettle refugees and how many. This brings the matter back to national level and national policies which, according to Tsvetanov, Bulgaria lacked. Lawyer Iliana Savova, director of the Programme for the Legal Defence of Refugees and Migrants at the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, an NGO working in the field of protection of human rights, agrees.   

"The issue is a matter of national policy and no one can make Bulgaria decide on it if it doesn’t want to," she told The Sofia Echo.

Moods
Some people will always react negatively to the prospect of accepting immigrants, especially those from a different religious background. "People should know that we are talking about people who have already been granted refugee status; this is a major difference from talking about asylum seekers," Savova said.

"Next to that, when it is a case of resettlement, we are talking about people who want to work and have little desire to live on welfare and can actually contribute to society," she said. "Such people want to work and earn money like everyone else and Bulgarians should not feel under threat and be subject to prejudices especially when it comes to Muslims, because not all immigrants are necessarily Muslims and not all come from North Africa."