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Surveillance flights at Romanian-Bulgarian border started this Thursday
The Giurgiu Border Police Inspectorate (ITPF) on Thursday started flights for the surveillance of the Romanian-Bulgarian common border with support from the General Aviation Inspectorate of the Romanian Ministry of Interior in the presence of Bulgarian border police partners.
"At ITPF Giurgiu,we deal with the surveillance and control of the border crossing on the entire border formed by the Danube River, and today we have started flights for border surveillance with support from the General Aviation Inspectorate of the Romanian Ministry of Interior, and on this occasion, I had the honour to have with me the director of the Ruse Regional Directorate of the Bulgarian Border Police Dimitar Chorbadzhiev. I said that we inaugurated it because part of the joint Romanian-Bulgarian border surveillance actions, starting today, a new way of border surveillance, from the air," head of ITPF Giurgiu Viorel Chiran told a news conference at Giurgiu border crossing.
He added that the ITPF Giurgiu covers about 450 kilometres, from the border between the counties of Dolj and Mehedinti to the city of Calarasi.
"We supervise this area jointly with our Bulgarian partners. We work together, as you can see, Romanian border guards and Bulgarian border guards work together on the ground, and we do border surveillance through our policing methods. But there are many activities that we carry out jointly, in particular joint patrolling on the Danube River with ships belonging to the Romanian Border Police and the Bulgarian Border Police, joint land patrolling, alternately on the Romanian shore and on the Bulgarian shore with vehicles of both the Romanian border police and the Bulgarian border police, and, more recently, you have seen air patrols and joint missions with the General Aviation Inspectorate of Romania," Chiran said.
According to him, the first drone at ITPF Giurgiu will arrive soon, but, for now, only for Dolj County, as border surveillance actions will be carried out together with the General Inspectorate for Immigration to check the accommodation areas in the border area.
Director of the Ruse Regional Border Directorate Dimitar Chorbadzhiev thanked the Giurgiu Border Police for their invitation to him to carry out together this mission of surveillance of the Danube River.
After Schengen accession, checks at the checking points will stay in force, but as members of the Schengen area, Bulgaria and Romania have to take compensatory measures and for that, together they make mixed patrols in the border area and now they are also applying this new way of observation by helicopter.
He added that now, with the aid of a helicopter and the observations made from the air and in the context in which the levels of the Danube waters have decreased, new places where there may be a risk of illegal crossing can be observed very well, so that appropriate measures can be taken.
These air patrolling measures in the Romanian-Bulgarian border area are part of the modes of action of the Romanian and Bulgarian border authorities as compensatory measures after accession to the Schengen Area.
Chiran and Chorbadzhiev arrived at the news conference in Giurgiu in an observation helicopter.