Last year in 2014, the numbers of migrants using the Western Balkan route into the EU reached unprecedented levels. According to Europe’s border agency, Frontex, the Serbian-Hungarian frontier has become the third most popular route into the EU for irregular migrants and asylum-seekers, after Greece and Italy.
Part 1: On the Migration Road in Bulgaria
Thousands of asylum seekers, many of them from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, are being denied entry to the European Union via Turkey’s border with Bulgaria. According to testimonies from asylum seekers, they are not only denied the opportunity to apply for asylum, but turned back by Bulgarian border police and, in many cases, beaten.