Bulgaria's Interior Minister Took part in Quadripartite Meeting in Thessaloniki

Bulgaria’s Minister of Interior Valentin Radev participated in a quadripartite meeting between Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia and Albania, held in Thessaloniki on 5^th of October. The main topics of the meeting were migration, countering terrorism and organized crime. The participants focused on the need for rapid exchange of information between different services for the purposes of immediate response and prevention.

Within the meeting, Minister Valentin Radev also held bilateral meetings. Radev and the Greek Minister of Public Order and Citizen Protection, Nikolaos Toskas expressed readiness to maintain and build upon the active political dialogue between the two Ministries of Interior, established since the beginning of 2016. They stressed that the operational cooperation with the Greek police is at a very high level.

They pointed out that the best European and Schengen practices are applied - parallel investigations and joint operations, effective work of the bilateral joint police and customs cooperation centre in Promahon and the trilateral centre with Turkey at the Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint - joint patrols in the resorts.

Minister Radev highly appreciated the cooperation with the Greek side regarding the implementation of the bilateral readmission agreement and added that good cooperation was also maintained in order to accelerate the pace of relocation and cooperation in the framework of EU joint actions on Greek territory. In the meeting with his Greek counterpart, Valentin Radev confirmed that Bulgaria’s admission to Schengen remains a political priority for the country and thanked Greece for its support on this matter. Minister Radev also said he relied on Greece's support for the implementation of the first Bulgarian presidency of the Council of the EU in the first half of 2018.

At the meeting with the Macedonian Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski, the two ministers also expressed readiness to maintain active contacts at political and professional level to strengthen co-operation in the field of home affairs, both bilaterally and within different regional formats. Minister Radev thanked Spasovski for stepping-up the security of the Bulgarian Embassy in Skopje, provided at Bulgaria’s request. He expressed hope that his Macedonian counterpart would personally take part in the EU-Western Balkans Ministerial Meeting on Justice and Home Affairs on 26-27 October 2017 in Sofia.

For the EU-Western Balkans meeting, Valentin Radev also personally invited the deputy Interior Minister of Albania Rovna Voda. The two have expressed their readiness to intensify bilateral contacts on issues of common interest and to help Albania in the process of European integration.

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