With a capacity of 3,600 people, the refugee centers are 72% full, Mariana Tosheva, chair of the State Agency for Refugees, has told BNT. She has called for capacity to be increased to 5,000 places.

"We have 6 refugee reception centers, two of which are 104% full. The center in Ovcha Kupel, where mainly minors live, accommodates 370 children. The Vrazhdebna center in Sofia is also full. In 2023, 590 EU migrants were returned to Bulgaria under the Dublin Agreement. 113 of them arrived from Austria. The Dublin agreement is not working well, especially in case of high migration pressure, so a solidarity mechanism was developed,” Tosheva points out. 

It is very important for the EU to have a unified approach to the countries of origin, she added and said that in addition to Syria and Afghanistan, there were many migrants from Morocco, Tunisia and Iraq.