Bulgaria will participate in the European Police Mission in Afghanistan (Eupol Afghanistan), Bulgarian Defence Minister Nikolai Mladenov was quoted as saying by Dnevnik daily on November 23 2009.

Mladenov made his statement during a discussion at the council for foreign policy in Sofia. For the moment, however, it is unclear as to how many specialists will apply for the job, therefore the exact scale of Bulgarian participation in the scheme is unknown.

The mission budget reportedly is 64 million euro. Originally, the mission was supposed to recruit 400 international policemen but only 280 were gathered. During the EU meeting in 2008 it was agreed that the Eupol mission in Afghanistan has to be augmented and reinforced to fulfill requirements.

The European Union initiated the Eupol task force in June 2007 in an attempt to curtail violence and offer assistance in the establishment of sustainable, trustworthy and effective policing arrangements across the war-torn country.

The task force is comprised of specialists from EU member states who work in conjunction with personnel from Canada, Croatia, New Zealand and Norway. The primary objective and task of the mission is to providing adequate training to the Afghan national police.

Concurrently, Eupol is also tasked with surveillance at the level of the Afghan interior ministry regions and provinces which is in turn implemented with close co-operation from other international partners in the International Police Coordination Board, most notably the combined security transition command in Afghanistan.

Mladenov said that "it is important that we alter our mentality and realise that in today's world we cannot think of our armed forces in such a territorial fashion – today, threats to our national security usually emanate thousands of miles away from Bulgaria, thus our participation in foreign missions is vital", he was quoted as saying by Dnevnik. He also said that financial resources allocated for international missions in which the Bulgarian armed forces participate will not be slashed in the future.