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"Twenty thousand refugees are arriving in Bulgaria," says Bulgarian daily Sega at a time when the country is already facing a rising tide of migrants, mostly coming from Syria and Afghanistan.
On October 9 alone, 121 people were stopped at the Turkish border, says the paper. Because of this, Sega explains, people smugglers are now attempting to reach Bulgaria by sea. A vessel with 24 Afghans on board was intercepted near Cap Kaliakra on the Black Sea coast.
"The living conditions of the refugees are deteriorating and it could soon turn into a humanitarian crisis, calling for extraordinary measures," the paper says, adding that the Home Affairs ministry expects another 13,000 Syrian refugees to arrive before the end of the year. The most pessimistic outcome estimates that 40,000 refugees will need accommodation in Bulgaria by spring 2014.
Standart, another Bulgarian daily, for its part, devotes its front page to an idea suggested by Home Affairs Minister Tsvetlin Iovchev proposing to "feed the Syrians without paying VAT". At the moment, supermarket chains wanting to donate aid to Syrian refugees are not doing so because they must pay VAT. Standart says that Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are the only remaining members of the European Union to apply VAT to humanitarian aid. The government is therefore, considering revising this provision.
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