“Yesterday I was at the border together with hundreds of residents of the Rudozem municipality and Smolyan region at a protest organized by Todor Batkov-son. I have no illusions that we will be heard from there, so in the coming week I will once again ask the government to put pressure on Greece to open the road it has illegally closed. The White Sea Pass, closed for 81 years, is high time it was reopened! Greece made this commitment to us back in 1996, and in return our state rewarded it with the waters of the river. Places, but this commitment 29 years later remains unfulfilled.”, wrote the chairman of “Vazrazhdane” - Kostadin Kostadinov on the social network.
Yesterday, as he himself reports, he joined a protest on the Bulgarian-Greek border near Rudozem, where in their desperation to stop Bulgarians from crossing, the Greeks have put up concrete barriers and duplicated them with a metal grid.
Yesterday, the protesters jumped over the barriers and entered Greece. The Greek police who arrived did not even check their documents, because under the Schengen rules, Bulgarian citizens have the right to cross the border on foot wherever they wish.
During yesterday's protest, Kostadin Kostadinov said that Greece has illegally erected a concrete wall between itself and Bulgaria, and he sees a miniature copy of the Berlin Wall. "If the Greeks are doing it so they can trade with Bulgaria and blackmail us for the waters of the Arda River, the big problem is why the Bulgarian government tolerates the violation of another Schengen rule - to freely cross the border with cars on the roads? This issue has not been raised before the European Commission at all. Why? We are members of the EU, right? That solves all problems? Why doesn't our country use the positions it has in the European Union and seek contact with the European Commission and the Commissioner for Transport?" Kostadinov also said.
He added that "Vazrazhdane" had sought contact with the European Commissioner for Transport, and the answer was that this should be done officially by the Bulgarian state, which “Vazrazhdane” will continue to insist on. Although Smolyan has four MPs from the other parties in the National Assembly, none of them attended yesterday's protest, but MP Angel Georgiev, who was the leader of the list in Smolyan in the last few parliamentary elections, was there. Moreover, none of the representatives elected from Smolyan have raised this important issue.
