Today, acting prime minister Dimitar Glavchev will symbolically raise the border barrier at the "Kulata" border checkpoint, BNT reported.
The traditional toast on New Year's Eve is even more special for Bulgaria, because we welcome 2025 as a full member of the largest free travel zone in the world. This was written on his Facebook profile by acting prime minister Dimitar Glavchev at midnight on the occasion of welcoming the new year and the full membership of Bulgaria and Romania in Schengen.
"The Schengen area is one of the main achievements of the European project and Bulgaria is deservedly already part of it, after years of consistent and purposeful work. The Cabinet successfully completed this process and in December in Brussels the long-awaited positive decision for our country was made", Glavchev points out.
"Membership in Schengen brings significant economic benefits to citizens, businesses and investors. Economists calculate the financial effect for our country at over 1.6 billion leva per year. In addition: huge time saved from queues - hundreds of thousands of hours. Additional benefits for the tourism business, which can also be calculated in millions of leva. Reduction of carbon emissions due to shorter stays at the borders - by over 46,000 tons of carbon emissions per year. The Schengen area also improves security in the EU. Every year, Europeans make about 1.25 billion trips within Schengen. Every day, about 3.5 million people cross internal borders to work or study or to visit their families and friends," the acting Prime Minister added.
For Bulgaria, Schengen is another successfully implemented national priority. There is still a lot of work to do, but with greater confidence we are already looking at the other big task - the eurozone, Glavchev added.
"Let's wish each other health, peace and prosperity in the New Year 2025! Long live Bulgaria! Happy New Year 2025," wrote Glavchev.
As FAKTI already wrote, at midnight, the acting Minister of Internal Affairs of Bulgaria Atanas Ilkov and his Romanian colleague Catalin Predoyu symbolically raised the barrier at the "Danube Bridge" border checkpoint at Ruse - Giurgiu, which marked the full acceptance of both countries into Schengen.