In a letter to the MPs, the caretaker cabinet proposes amendments to the criminal code connected with harsher penalties for persons involved in the illegal trafficking of migrants.

Some of the proposals aim to prevent suspended sentences. The proposals include confiscation of vehicles and fines when the vehicle does not belong to the driver. “The Interior Ministry cannot be left alone in this fight,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Ivan Demerdzhiev.

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“In this regard, penal legislation is adequate enough,” deputy chair of the parliamentary Committee on Internal Security and Public Order Rena Stefanova from We Continue the Change, who is a lawyer, said for the BNR. “Law students in their third year get to learn that what matters is not how harsh the prescribed punishment is, but the inevitability of execution of punishment – and it is precisely in this that we have a problem,” she added. In her words, few human traffickers are investigated and sentenced.