Turkish, Macedonian and Indian workers received more than half of the work permits given by the State Employment Agency (SEA) to non-EU nationals in Bulgaria during 2007. Over the whole of 2007 the SEA issued a total of 1241 work permits to non-EU citizens. Only 47 applications were denied, the SEA told The Sofia Echo on February 1. Of the work permits issued, Turkish nationals accounted for 454, Macedonian 164 and Indian 110.

Of the Indians, 88 were registered as business consultants, which may be explained by the fact that Indian businessman Pramod Mittal bought Bulgaria’s largest steel plant Kremikovtzi in 2005. With the issue of Kremikovtzi’s sale on the agenda, the number of Indian workers in Bulgaria is expected to decrease substantially in 2008.

Despite the series of bilateral agreements signed between Bulgaria and Russia in January, including energy projects worth billions of euro, the number of work permits issued to Russians in 2007 was almost less than half of those issued to US nationals. Russians were granted a total of 48 work permits while 71 US nationals were issued with work permits the SEA said. Of the latter, 26 were issued to business consultants and top management officials, 21 to teachers and 11 to athletes. In light of the recent offer by Ukrainian billionaire Konstyatyn Zhevago to buy Kremikovtzi, it is interesting to see that the number of Ukrainians who received work permits in Bulgaria in 2007 was 93. Serbs accounted for 65 of the people gaining work permits while Brazilian nationals another 33. All the Brazilians were athletes, which may be explained by the latest fashion of Bulgarian football clubs to buy little-known, and less expensive, Brazilian players who, in return, hope to use Bulgaria as a transfer opportunity to the bigger European football clubs. Chinese nationals accounted for 33 of the work permits, most of these for jobs as cooks and chefs.

The SEA data for January 2008 was still being processed the agency said, and would be published at the end of March as the SEA produces its reports every three months.

Unlike the data SEA has for non-EU nationals working in Bulgaria, the agency has little or no data on how many EU nationals work in Bulgaria. “Bulgaria joined the European Union on January 1 2007 and since then every EU national can work within the borders of Bulgaria since Bulgaria’s labour market is open to all EU nationals, as opposed to some other EU countries that still have limits on the number of Bulgarians working there,” the SEA said. Another problem for collecting accurate data on the number of EU nationals working in Bulgaria was that SEA gets its data from sources such as the agency’s regional branches. “We had one case last year in Veliko Turnovo where a German national had registered as unemployed but that was it.”

As for the time-consuming process in terms of how long it takes for an employer to register a non-EU worker in Bulgaria, the SEA said that it was one month at the most. “This is what our regulations say.” However non-EU nationals would have to wait for the SEA to carry out its own investigations to make sure there wasn’t a Bulgarian who was able to do the job to which the the permit related. “If we don’t find a Bulgarian specialist, then the foreigner can take the job,” the SEA said.

There have been a number of cases when a foreign worker has been denied a work permit but the SEA was unable to provide data at this stage. “You must know that there could be a number of reasons a foreign worker was denied work permit, not simply because there was a Bulgarian worker available to take the job.”

The SEA is currently working on a guide for foreigners. The guide will have all the information about what a foreigner needs to do to get a work permit in Bulgaria. “We have the Bulgarian text and we are currently working on the English version. We expect it to be ready within a few weeks,” the SEA said.