Truck crossing problems on Turkey-Bulgaria border resolved

Issues causing long truck lines at the Turkey-Bulgaria border have been resolved, Bulgaria’s interior minister said.

“Truck traffic returned to normal thanks to the intervention of the gendarmerie,” caretaker Interior Minister Ivan Dermenciev said after inspecting the Kapitan Andreevo border gate, across from the Kapıkule gate on the Turkish side.

Dermenciev noted that Bulgaria’s provisional government, which took office on Aug. 2, faced problems related to truck queues at the border with Turkey. Under former Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, the Bulgarian government had employed a private company to conduct inspections at Kapitan Andreevo, with the firm carrying out “food health inspections” at the border for roughly 10 years.

Former Prime Minister Kiril Petkov, who resigned in July, said no real inspections were being conducted at the border crossing and that the state had suffered a loss of at least 500 million euros ($509 million) in 10 years.

Petkov terminated the work of the border inspection company, but a court later overturned the decision.

When state officials then began inspecting the company’s work, long queues of trucks formed as they waited to cross the border for up to 26 hours.