Bulgaria promises to fight the mafia at its borders

The Bulgarian government pledged on Thursday to fight the shadowy and criminal organisations that profit from traffic at its borders and tarnish the country's image.

Caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev ordered the National Revenue Agency and the counter-intelligence agency State Agency for National Security (SANS) to start checks on companies that control buffer parking areas for lorries along the borders with Turkey and Romania.

Two days ago, Bulgarian transport organisations announced that their counterparts from Greece and Turkey wanted to organise a bypass of Bulgaria because of the transport chaos in the country.

"Because of the tension at the borders, Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev called an urgent meeting at the Council of Ministers and ordered the checks to clarify the situation in a short time and to take measures to normalise border crossings," the Bulgarian government's press office said on Thursday.

The problem of buffer car parks, run by companies linked to shadowy figures in Bulgarian business, has been going on for more than a year, but so far, the government has shown no sign of taking action.

At key points, lorry traffic to Turkey and Romania is diverted to paid parking areas with traffic lights, and drivers are then forced to pay €25. So far, the Bulgarian police have refused to reveal who installed the traffic lights and why. People in the transport business point out that the car parks are controlled by business interests.

"The state has completely abdicated the organisation and management of traffic at border crossings. It has left this task completely 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 car parks is currently organised does not solve the problems with the huge queues of trucks waiting for 20-30 hours, but on the contrary - exacerbates them even more," Lalova said about the international reaction to the chaos at border crossings.

At the beginning of the week, after the forum of the Union of Road Transport Associations in the BSEC region (BSEC-URTA), it was announced that Greece and Turkey were looking for alternative transport corridors to bypass Bulgaria because of the absurd truck fees and long waiting times.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)