The Kapitan Andreevo border crossing, one of the busiest in Europe, is more than 150 kilometers from the nearest sea, but Bulgarian customs officer Georgi Gospodinov is on the lookout for boats. This is stated in a report by Agence France-Presse from Bulgaria.
The border crossing between Turkey and Bulgaria is also more than 2,500 km from the English Channel, where Britain is trying to stop record numbers of undocumented migrants crossing in small boats.
Gospodinov and the other customs officers at the "Captain Andreevo" post are key contributors to this campaign.
In just over a year, 52 motorbikes, 49 rubber boats, 755 hand pumps and 110 life jackets were confiscated, mostly from Turkish trucks traveling to Western Europe.
In late 2022, British authorities approached the Balkan country to stop small boats used for dangerous journeys entering the European Union.
The Bulgarian customs officials first set out to prove that the boats they discovered were destined for the French coast, from where the voyages to Great Britain depart.
"We left specific marks on the outboard engines and notified our British partners who were then able to identify the derelict engines on the British coast," he told AFP.
After it was shown that the same boats were later used by smugglers organizing the Channel crossing, EU imports of small inflatable boats, motors and life jackets were restricted
The smell of rubber
Customs officers with specially trained dogs check hundreds of trucks traveling to the West at the Kapitan Andreevo checkpoint every day after passing through an X-ray scanner.
According to officials, the special shape of the engines is easy to detect, and over time they have become better at identifying the bags containing the carefully folded boats.
British authorities sent a dog specially trained to detect the smell of rubber.
London has provided a total of £1.2m (€1.4m) to train staff and provide equipment, including surveillance drones.
During his visit to Sofia in February, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the partnership with Bulgaria was vital to stop "illegal...horrific human trafficking" because "many people are losing their lives".
Britain has started a similar collaboration with France.
"Politically, it's a big problem," especially since Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, said Nando Sigona, an expert on international migration at the University of Birmingham.
"One of the Brexit promises was to 'take back control' of the UK's borders," he told AFP, so "failure to stop arrivals ... could be politically lethal."
The situation has weakened the ruling British Conservative Party. It is widely predicted that the opposition Labor Party will regain power for the first time since 2010 in elections expected this year.
Sustainable traffic networks
In the first quarter of 2024, British officials processed 5,373 migrants who landed on the southern English coast after crossing the Channel in small craft. This is a nearly 42% increase on last year, according to figures from the British Home Office.
Since the start of the year, at least seven migrants, including a seven-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, have lost their lives trying to reach England.
In 2023, a total of nearly 30,000 people arrived across the Channel.
The majority of migrants are Afghans, Iranians, Turks, Eritreans and Iraqis.
The British government's agreements with several European countries, notably Albania - which have led to a sharp drop in the number of arrivals from the Balkan country - "are having some effect", Sigona said.
However, "channel nets are very resilient and are constantly finding and pursuing other sources of boats," he said.
"You can't solve the problem by dealing with the consequences," said Nicolas Posner, a spokesman for the French aid group Utopia 56, noting that these boats first appeared in 2018 when traffic control checkpoints had been tightened.
"The more barriers, the greater the police presence, the more risks the sewers take," he said. /BGNES
