Bulgaria is also withdrawing from the UN migration pact

Sofia

After the USA, Hungary, Australia and Austria, Bulgaria is withdrawing from the planned global migration pact of the United Nations. „The agreement endangers the national interests of Bulgaria,“ said the leader of the national-conservative governing party GERB, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, on Monday, according to news agency BTA.

„We think this is the right decision at the moment, given the behavior and positioning of other responsible factors in the country,“ said Tsvetanov following a government meeting. On Wednesday, the parliament in Sofia will debate the UN migration pact.

193 UN member states had agreed in 2016 to close the migration pact. The 34-page document aims to help better organize refugee flows and strengthen the rights of those affected. The document also emphasizes that the sovereignty of the nation states and their right to autonomous organization of their migration policy should not be affected by the pact.

Also read: Questions and answers – What is in the contract?

Critics complain that migration in the paper is largely positive. From the point of view of Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, there is a danger of a mixture of legal and illegal migration, labor migration and asylum. Even if the pact is not binding, individual provisions on the detour of lawsuits and customary law could possibly develop political force, it said in Vienna. According to the UN, around 190 million people worldwide are migrants.