THE Government last week approved amendments to the regulations of the Foreigners Act, including a provision that all foreign nationals who want permanent residence in Bulgaria will have to prove to the Bulgarian authorities they have mastered the Bulgarian language.
If the foreigner has primary, secondary or higher education from a Bulgarian school, a copy of the diploma will serve as proof of knowledge of Bulgarian.
If this is not the case, the foreigner will have to sit a written exam.
The measure applies to foreigners wanting permanent residence, to live and work in Bulgaria, for which people become eligible according to various criteria, including having invested more than $250 000 in Bulgaria or having married a Bulgarian citizen.
The amendments also say that foreigners who enter Bulgaria will have to prove they have at their disposal 50 leva, or the equivalent in foreign currency, for every day of their stay in this country. Exceptions will be made only for those who come to Bulgaria as part of academic, scientific or cultural exchange programmes.
Meanwhile, recent media reports said that 50 000 Macedonian nationals had approached Bulgarian authorities to acquire Bulgarian passports. The reasons behind this unprecedented influx of Bulgarian citizens-to-be from the country's neighbour were mainly economic, yet the specific historic relations between the two countries render a political context to this phenomenon too, the Macedonian private TV channel A1 commented.
By getting a Bulgarian passport, a Macedonian will be then able to travel freely around the Schengen countries.
A Bulgarian passport is said to cost between 100 and 300 euro. Part of the documents, needed to receive a passport, are easy to obtain from the Macedonian courts, the television station said.
Macedonia allows dual citizenship under certain circumstances, but Skopje and Sofia have not yet signed an agreement to this end. Unofficial information, however, is that more than 15 000 Macedonian nationals have received Bulgarian passports in the past four years.
Between 200 000 and 300 000 Turkish exiles are also said to have applied for Bulgarian IDs and passports. This may drastically tip off the ethnic balance in the region of Kurdjali, southern Bulgaria, in the next three or four years, observers have said.
So far the exiles have been receiving special IDs for a long stay in this country, which saved them having to queue at Bulgaria's consular missions in Turkey. Now exiles' associations are said to be popularising the idea that a Bulgarian passport gives its holder the right to travel freely around Europe. To get the passports, the exiles should have stayed six months with their relatives in Bulgaria.
Turkish nationals who left Bulgaria in compliance with the exile agreements of 1952, 1968 and 1978 have been making official steps to restore the residence rights they lost. They now meet the conditions to acquire such status in the light of the Law of Bulgarian citizenship. Three years ago a row ensued following a request by the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the party mainly supported by ethnic Turks in Bulgaria, that such people should be given citizenship, and with it the right to vote in parliamentary elections.
To acquire the rights of Bulgarian nationals, the exiles have to pass through two stages. First they get permanent residence. If then within three years they stay in this country for at least six consecutive months, they meet the conditions for Bulgarian citizenship.