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Regarding the comfort of others

To enact change, we need more than virtuous deeds and good intentions


09/02/2026

Who is an activist and what makes them one? An activist, by word, means someone who takes/performs/does an action. There is a common belief among many that taking action (political/social/humanitarian/environmental) is a virtue. It frames action as exceptional, morally superior, requiring a specific kind of nobility, innocence, and even godliness. In doing so, it removes action from the realm of the ordinary and places it into the realm of moral victory, something to aspire to rather than something to be expected. This belief is inherently and essentially an invitation to passivity.

If one argues that they lack this virtue and thus cannot take meaningful action, this belief distorts the possible and feasible activities necessary to interrupt the injustice of the status quo, both within and beyond where they stand, into an impossible scale to measure and therefore, to execute. The actions that could have been small, situated, and uncomplicated become measureless, global, and complex. Action is imagined only at the scale of total resolution, and anything less is dismissed as insufficient, symbolic, or meaningless.

This framing creates a shield between all that is political and what is considered normal life. Politics becomes a ground you can step onto under extraordinary circumstances, and with extreme caution, while everyday life is treated as neutral, apolitical, and normal. The violence of the status quo is thus allowed to continue uninterrupted, not because it is unseen, but because it has been rendered out of the routines of daily existence, to some participants of that so-called normal life.

But what is a “normal” life?

To many people, what is deemed as normal feels soothing. It is waking up, possibly going to work, then going back home or out with friends or family, getting some well-deserved rest, and going to bed again. It is comfortable, and it is safe, in the sense that you will wake up and know how the rest of the day will look, and it will go just like you thought it would. You can predict it, plan it, control it.

To the rest of the world,“normal” is not even close to this definition. Normal is the unknown. Something that cannot be predicted, but is expected to come down, maybe not instantly, not now, but surely, eventually. Normal is waking up with the news of executions, of political and environmental activists being sentenced their entire lives to jail, of erasure, of famine, of learning about new regulations of oppression. For many, normal is fear, and the expectation of the worst.

Some are born in times of war, while their parents hold them as babies and flee from town to town, country to country, trying to take themselves and their children to safety. To a place where normal is not defined by not knowing whether you will wake up tomorrow or not.

There is nothing wrong with what is believed to be normal for those who live in comfort. What is wrong is actively trying to unsee the “normal” to the rest of the world, and finding it natural that their normal is different from yours. To unsee the poor, the homeless, the neglected. This requires effort, because it is not easy to unsee. Those who are unseen are part of everyday life. They are the news consumed, the food brought to the table, the labour performed. They are workers, peers, classmates, friends, lovers. They are parts of the life we live, until their existence interrupts our joy, our norm, our comfort. And then: suddenly invisible. Dismissed. Suddenly, it is impossible to hear or see or notice them.

Comfort is key. Who does not want comfort? Who does not want to not be in pain, to not suffer, to not experience the most extreme forms of violence daily? But this comfort, this privilege, is built on stacks of pain and suffering, put on top of each other one after one throughout history. Comfort becomes whole only when paired with the feeling of being “one of the good ones.” Ethical. Kind. Helpful. Human.

But who is a “good one” anyway? Good to whom, and by what measures? Is goodness the smile given to a homeless person on a snowy day, or helping a “good” cause with a couple of euros? Does goodness stem from intention, or does it flow from action? Is it holding the door open for the person behind you, or chanting “none of us are free, until all of us are free” in a parade?

There is a moment in the film Parasite when the mother of the poor family remarks that the rich woman is “nice because she’s rich”. Comfort constructs a facade of seeming caring. Of listening with sad eyes and a broken smile while hearing the struggles of a Kurdish coworker. Of sighing, or shedding a tear when hearing news from the furthest parts of the world, iterated, heard, and understood in the most abstract way possible.

Susan Sontag in Regarding the Pain of Others writes that “to speak of reality becoming a spectacle is provincial. It universalizes the viewing habits of a small, educated population living in wealthy parts of the world, where news has been converted into entertainment. It assumes that everyone is a spectator. It suggests, perversely, that there is no real suffering in the world.”

This mere spectatorship, this bystander effect for the consumers of politics and news of war and conflict as entertainment, also puts the burden and weight on the shoulders of the oppressed, and on the very few people and groups who continuously try to dismantle systems of injustice. Responsibility concentrates where vulnerability already exists, while those who benefit most from stability are permitted to remain spectators. Action becomes the labour only to those who cannot afford to just watch.

Within this logic, one can also argue that “I have already done the virtuous work, that I have donated to the survivors of Hurricane Catarina, that I have acted ethically elsewhere. And therefore, I do not need to speak up about the genocide in Gaza or the democide in Iran.” Virtue becomes transferable, interchangeable, and finite, stored in a moral account that can be balanced, settled, and closed.

When action becomes virtue, and comfort prioritized, witnessing turns decorative, and movement symbolic. Decency becomes something to be performed to the right audience and on a visible stage rather than something to be done, despite no one looking. To the people deliberately consuming suffering as spectators, profiting from these systems can be something they did not design, but choose to preserve through non-action.

What I want to offer as the way out is not more awareness, not louder declarations of decency, but the separation of “meaningful action” from ego, from good deeds, and from the lust of showing morality through performative acts and symbolic righteousness.

Witnessing and movement cannot remain decorative or cherished symbols of being on the right side. They have to be normalized. Stripped of moral theatricality. Detached from the performance of goodness.

Meaningful action should not be perceived as decency. It should not feel virtuous. It should feel obvious. Like duty. Like maintenance. When water floods an ant’s nest, there is no debate, no reward, and no ant begs another one to stop the ruination. There is only continuous action to prevent annihilation.

A world sustained by blood and silence does not change through kinder and more aware spectators. It changes when action stops being theatre and becomes ordinary, constant, even boring, yet unavoidable interruption of that silence.

The Castle in the Air

What do we mean by stability? And is it a good thing?


“If I try to find some useful phrase to sum up the time of my childhood and youth before the First World War, I hope I can put it most succinctly by calling it the Golden Age of Security.”  

These are the opening words written by Stefan Zweig in his memoirs, The World of Yesterday. He wrote them from a little white house on the hill overlooking suburban Rio de Janeiro as palm trees swayed in the  breeze of the evening beyond his blue-shuttered windows. In his love letter to Habsburg Vienna, he recalls the security of his youth, the progressive and cosmopolitan culture he grew up in, and the international order that allowed it to flourish. As he wrote from this little white house at the height of the Second World War, millions of his books across Central Europe were either hidden or burned because they were written by a Jewish author.

He admitted painfully in retrospect that, “Now that a great storm has long since destroyed it, we know at last that our world of security was a castle in the air. Yet my parents lived in it as if it were a solid stone house. Not once did a storm or a cold draught invade their warm, comfortable existence.” His castle in the air was  the post-Napoleonic international order.

Almost exactly one century before the outbreak of the First World War, the Great Powers gathered in Zweig’s beloved Vienna to settle the rupture to stability caused by the French Revolution, and the 23 years of continental war that followed. After Napoleon’s defeat, the European powers saw fit to construct an international order based on diplomacy, enforced by the dual hegemony of Britain and Russia. The settlement of the Congress of Vienna succeeded in preventing any major wars between the European powers. It provided a stability that remained until the continent found itself sleepwalking into the catastrophe of 1914.

But what do we mean by “stability”? The Vienna settlement established a framework of diplomacy for the Great Powers to manage their disputes – one that struck a balance between conservatism and flexibility. The Greek Revolution illustrates this. Nationalism was a threat to the multi-ethnic empires, yet the persistence of the Greek revolutionaries and the involvement of British finance led the Great Powers to carry out the first overseas intervention of a kind that we would recognise today. The Greeks were granted a state, but with a  German king on the new throne. The resolution was tolerable to the Great Powers and avoided a major war in Europe.

Yet in the absence of war on the continent, Europe turned its eyes to the periphery and to its colonies. The  Great Powers expanded through military conquest as empires grew to their greatest extent in all of human history, replacing the global economy with European monopolies as they went. The British Governor General of India wrote in 1834 that “the bones of the cotton-weavers are bleaching the plains of India”. Once the world’s leading producer of textiles, India was deindustrialised by Britain to create a market for fabrics woven by children and the working poor in cities like Manchester.

Of Manchester itself, Engels wrote that the “working-people are crowded into the worst-built parts of the town… in damp, filthy cellars, in dark, unventilated courts, where all conditions of life are combined which undermine health and destroy the human being.” In this era of “stability” then, the logic of political economists of  the time was that the poor must endure these conditions so as not to overpopulate.

So by stability we cannot mean peace, and we cannot mean justice. What made the framework stable was that it endured. The Great Powers benefited while others did not. Both Zweig and Engels describe two sides of the same coin in a post-Vienna international order.

The words of Zweig may resonate with those lamenting the death of an ‘international rules based order’ today. They say that the post-1945 world was one where laws governed international relations; where international courts restrained state power; and in which individuals could navigate predictable lives in the comfort of security and the peace of stability. They find good company with Zweig in their nostalgia of a Golden Age of Security.

Yet this narrative sits uneasily against the backdrop of the Palestinians under occupation and genocide; the Cubans behind decades of embargo; the Cambodians lost to Kissinger’s secret war; the Iraqis invaded on fabricated grounds; and the unquantifiable loss to the orthodoxy of austerity and ‘structural adjustment’.

At Davos, Mark Carney spoke of the ‘rupture’ of this order. It was a rare moment in which a beneficiary of the old world stability acknowledged a facade. One that those who have suffered under it have never had the luxury of  missing: that which had passed for an order based on universal rules was, at least in part, a facade.

None of this is to deny the gains of an age of decolonisation and generally rising living standards. But this is not a fall from grace. It is the end of a form of stability in a way we have seen before. Like the Vienna settlement, the international order that we appear to be leaving behind was neither just nor peaceful, but a stable global system of power and inequality that for a time endured.

So, what next? Perhaps a new Congress of Vienna – but who would be invited, and by whom? Like the post-Vienna and post-1945 worlds, will it be an uneven framework of those within the world of security and those outside it, or a more equitable distribution of power?

Whatever follows, it is clear that we cannot build our politics on nostalgia of a Golden Age of Security that  never existed. Perhaps one day we will recall how the images from Gaza that we saw on our phones expressed to us in the simplest of terms that the rules based international order in which we lived was our very own castle in the air.

Between culture and revolution

A prospect on the fate of technocracy


07/02/2026

Modern building in Berlin, made completely of glass windows.

Probably a good starting point will be a short and proper definition of culture, that can be taken from O. Spengler’s Decline of the West: ‘cultures are organisms, and world-history is their collective biography.’ Such a philosophical definition might be difficult to interpret, but for the use of this article we will define culture as a developing system of beliefs, prospects, conceptions of and about art and philosophy. 

One way or another the culture can be linked to the left. On one hand, this connection comes from some key characteristics: inclusion, equity, equality. Also, culture aligns with the left not for ideological reasons, but because both reject hierarchy, by allowing pluralism, offering perspectives for a better common future. The ‘left’ and the ‘culture’ can be bonded, on the other hand, on another line: the left has its own culture, it has its own understanding of philosophy—based on dialectics and reinterpretation of art. This second part is probably more important; it brings us closer to the real purpose of art and closer to the ‘world of the ideas;’ to the better world we can participate in in order to rethink art, culture, and politics. In doing so we can give them new life. 

That is the reason why we won’t talk about ‘high culture,’ ‘basic culture,’ ‘high politics,’ or ‘low politics.’ Such distinctions, whether in culture or in left-wing politics, are controversial, they go against basic principles and core ideas of our perception. We have to include every cultural act, we have to include everybody at the same time in politics and in culture. The ‘elitization’ of those  social phenomena drifts them away from their core and brings us, as individuals, away from ourselves. 

Anti-elitization is a process we have to voluntarily work for.  We have to look forward to forming new beliefs, without a conception of an elite. We are witnessing that there are different types of elites: political, economical, cultural, technological, and last but not least, educational. Those elites have different functions: the political governs, the technological designs algorithms, the cultural gives us standards, and the educational certifies worth. They claim they are neutral, but all of them depend on exclusion in order to function. 

The more elites we allow to form, the worse we allow our own situation to become, because today you are part of the elite, tomorrow—when the elite does not need you—you are out of it. The best way to counter this is to not participate in those elites at all. 

Our fight against the system has to be continuous; we cannot build new culture with elites. And we cannot build a new world without education. We need people who think, we need people who know what they want, and, last but not least, people who are familiar with different cultures and recognize art as an important part of their life. 

This brings us back to the culture and art. Bourgeois art is coming back. It returns through function. It decorates power and represses. In times of technofeudalism and global technocracy, capitalism and pseudoart are blooming. In order to fight back we need social art and a functional left, a left which has a conception, which has new ideas and is inclusive. 

One might ask, “What is a technocracy and why should I care about it?” If we define technocracy as an apolitical, professional governance, ruled by an elite of technical experts, we will give ourselves a really shallow perspective. That way, the exploitation—which is an inseparable part of the technocracy—will be missed and this work will not give you anything new. It won’t broaden your perspective. We need to focus on this misuse. Instead, let us define technocracy as a ‘performatively apolitical, repressive regime, dependent on exploitation.’ As mentioned above, technocracy and feudalism can use you, the citizen, in order to achieve the goals of their leaders of the so-called ‘elite’ you are entering. But if they are ready to sacrifice their own members, the elite will always exploit other people. 

Capitalism is also part of the problem. Technocracy without capitalism is unthinkable. The human potential can and will be used by technofeudalists and technocrats in order to achieve their own goals and accumulate power (either in the form of capital or political power) in their hands. 

This way—without noticing—people are pushed to the side and they decide to sell their own freedom for ‘professionalism’ and expertise. 

In the context of our grotesque modernity the idea of ‘professionalism’ is distorted. At first we believed in professionals, then we started believing in pseudoprofessionals, and today we are creating demi-gods. People kneel in front of the elites they support every day. 

Where in this context can we find culture? Do we really need it? Culture is not just a theoretical concept. I truly believe we have to construct an organic conception of culture, in order to feel it more applicable and create a real hunger for it. Today we have a static culture, it looks like social media which artists and the ordinary person create at the same time, but this is far from true. It is shaped not by those subjects I mentioned, it is produced by algorithms and AI. 

Looking forward to the organic conception of culture we have to put ‘AI-art’, sham intelligence and profanity aside. Modern thinkers have to stay original, they have to create, they have to influence, otherwise we are lost. Culture shapes; it shows us new areas of our collective subconscious. Once we reject the new feudal system of technocracy,  we will be at least two steps closer to the new culture; the veil of ignorance will be lifted. Without culture and education we are going nowhere. 

And lastly, regarding the left: no, here we don’t have to connect the left with a certain Left, a party or a coalition. Left ideas in their different forms have to be the antipode of technocracy and neofeudalism. We need a political color, a certain person, or a collective body to hold accountable. Those new doctrines blur the responsibility, they push us to new political regimes, that they call apolitical. But they are scarier, darker and more dangerous than the systems we know, deep down they are political. They are even more problematic. 

Those conclusions bring us back to the starting point: culture and revolution. Culture is the revolution we need today—it opens eyes and shows different points of view. Culture has to be established  before technocracy can enfold us. Technocracy is capable, we cannot risk letting it succeed. Without culture, resistance becomes façade. Without revolution, culture will be just an ornament. Our fight for a new culture and against technocracy has to be permanent, at least until we can proclaim our victory.

Dockworkers on strike, whither Germany?

Dockworkers in twenty-one Mediterranean ports strike against military involvement and war


06/02/2026

Strike banner reading in Italian translated to English: "Dockers don't work for war"

On the 6th of February 2026, dockworkers in twenty-one ports across the Mediterranean, stretching from Tangier, Morocco to Mersin, Turkey, will go on strike. They are striking under the slogan: “The Ports do not work for War”. The strike is led by the Italian-based Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) and is affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU)—their parent organisation.

Their demands are spelled out in unequivocal terms on the USB website. Here are their demands:

  • Guarantee that European and Mediterranean ports are places of peace and free from any involvement in the war
  • Oppose the effects of the war economy on our wages, pensions, rights, and health and safety conditions
  • Block all arms shipments from our ports towards genocide in Palestine and any other war zone, and to demand a trade embargo on Israel from governments and local institutions
  • Oppose the EU’s rearmament plan and to stop the forthcoming EU and European governments’ plan to militarise strategic ports and infrastructure
  • Reject rearmament as an alibi to introduce further privatisation and automation of ports

In an increasingly belligerent Europe, defense spending has consistently increased year after year. This trend has persisted for the last decade. In 2025, EU member states have spent more than 2% of their GDP on defense. This is a ~63% increase in defense spending compared to 2020 . 

On the other hand, the population at risk of poverty hovers close to 20% in Italy, and even higher in other EU states. The statement by the Italian union makes it clear that these imperialist wars and militarisation are not in the interest of workers, and never will be. 

As Fabian Lehr points out in this incisive analysis, a war economy based on imperialism, cannot be in the interest of workers. It will only benefit large corporations, like Rheinmetall, who will make windfall profits by charging the State whatever they can get away with. This is already reflected in the stock markets—good harbingers of what to expect—where Rheinmetall’s shares have more than doubled over the last year. The problem with a war economy is, that once you turn metal into tanks, bombs, and guns, there are only two possibilities: either they sit around as inventory, or you find a way to sell or use them.

Over the last two years as Israel commits genocide in Gaza, Germany has actively exported arms to the Israeli military. Germany happily ranks as their second largest supplier worldwide. With this re-armament drive, it seems like Germany will have to look for even more warring parties to sell to, or perhaps invent a war of its own.

German trade unions

While the dockworkers strike is a clear sign that the WFTU holds a principled, class-oriented, anti-war stance, the trade union discourse in Germany is far more concerning. At its annual press conference on January 26th, IG Metall—Germany’s (and one of the world’s) largest trade unions comprised of 2.2 million members—released its Initiative for Jobs and Economic Recovery. It says:

“The situation is objectively difficult, but by no means hopeless. Now it’s about setting the right course. Because there are stable industries undergoing transformation and promising fields of the future. These are described in the “High-Tech Agenda Germany” and outlined by the IG Metall “Opportunities Map”: Besides products for the mobility and energy transition, aerospace, AI and quantum computing, defense and security, medical technology, and robotics. We must now seize these opportunities boldly and decisively.” 

The Union takes a conciliatory tone towards state policy, and towards big businesses. One gets the feeling that the German worker is expected to be thankful to the Union for getting them “opportunities in fields like aerospace, defense and security”, but is not supposed to question the foundation on which this edifice is built!  

Why is there such a stark difference between the response of Italian and German unions? One possible reason is that the right to strike in Italy is an individual right; there is no obligation for a strike to be called by a union. Alternatively, in Germany there are far stricter rules around who can call for a strike (only trade unions), and for what reasons (quite restrictive). 

This interview with Mohammed Alattar, a Palestinian dock worker from Hamburg, shines a light on the nature of the problem. Responding to a question about the difference between unions in Italy and Germany he says: 

“Unlike Germany, the unions in Italy are combative and pursue much more the interests of workers than those of the government. Union executives, trustees, and other workers have marched together on the big demo. I have even witnessed how workers, by occupying a terminal, prevented the loading of a ZIM ship with armaments for Israel. Here, on the other hand, the DGB has nothing better to do than to repeat the pro-Zionist propaganda narratives of the German government and to support the militarisation of Germany.”

It is not all gloom and doom though. Initiatives like Rheinmetall Entwaffnen have been organising at local and national levels to try and shut the weapons industry down. A group of trade unionists called Gewerkschafter 4 Gaza have been trying to get the trade unions in Germany to change course.

Forcing structural change in Germany will be a huge challenge, but perhaps the Mediterranean dockworkers strike can inspire workers in Germany to reclaim their power from Union bosses—and lead an illegal strike or two, so that one day we no longer have to take to the streets and say: “Deutsche Waffen, Deutsches Geld, morden mit in aller Welt!”

EU-funded violence against people on the move in Bulgaria 

Human rights violations have increased since Bulgaria joined Schengen


05/02/2026

At Europe’s south-eastern external border lies Bulgaria: a country which has been in political crisis for years and just saw major Gen Z-led protests, which caused the collapse of its government. But it also has a decisive role in upholding Europe’s border fortress. Bulgaria is often the first European Union country on the so-called Balkan migration route. People who come from Syria, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, or Morocco will likely enter the EU from Turkey into Bulgaria. 

Many human rights violations have been published since 2015, directly asking EU bodies to increase pressure against Bulgaria’s illegal practices at their southern border with Turkey. Instead, Bulgaria became a member of the border-free Schengen zone in 2025. The EU Commission could have used the accession process to force Bulgaria to comply with human rights standards. A missed chance. Rather, since Bulgaria joined the Schengen zone, reported human rights violations have continued as multiple testimonies indicate. 

Border violence 

The Balkan route has been a topic of discussion for the past ten years. Bulgaria started building a 230km barbed-wire fence at its southern border in 2017. To cross this border, people on the move walk for days, crossing rivers and forests with temperatures dropping to minus 10 degrees Celsius. Making it across does not guarantee people the right to seek asylum, although this is enshrined in the 1951 Geneva Convention. Every year, tens of thousands of people are illegally pushed back at the Bulgarian border. In 2023, 175.000 cases of illegal pushbacks were identified, and at least 70 people died due to exhaustion, dehydration or hypothermia. 

People on the move report illegal and violent pushbacks directly at the border to Turkey, as well as hundreds of kilometres away from the border back to Turkey. Some people describe being taken to the police station for 1–3 days before being forced into police trucks back to the border, without a chance to ask for asylum, a clear violation of international law. During pushbacks, people are beaten with fists and sticks. Police dogs are used to catch and attack people, phones are destroyed, people are strip-searched, and valuables and clothing are stolen, leaving some only in underwear without shoes in freezing temperatures. Racist smears, such as calling people read as from the so-called Middle East or Northern Africa “Taliban”, have been published by Human Rights Watch and No Name Kitchen, two organisations, among others, taking testimonies of people on the move. Some people have been shot at. 

After years of reporting by activists, non-governmental organisations and investigative journalists, EU-bodies are quite aware of the situation at the Bulgarian-Turkish border. But Bulgaria plays a key role in the border security enforcement of the EU. Due to its crucial geographical position as the first EU country on the Balkan migration route (with Greece), the EU directly benefits from these illegal border practices. 

Supported by Frontex

Frontex, the EU’s border agency, also operates at Bulgaria’s border to Turkey in cooperation with national authorities. They support border surveillance through patrolling, thermo-vision equipment and police dogs to detect “irregular migration”. The EU tripled the presence of Frontex in 2024, in preparation for Bulgaria joining Schengen. In their own words, their operations focus on ensuring fundamental rights and human dignity.

Activists on the ground call out Frontex for their role in the region regularly. The presence of Frontex does not lead to more safety. Rather, officers are directly involved in border violence. Internal reports of Frontex have shown that their officers have taken part in illegal pushbacks. 

In 2024, three boys died at the border. While people on the move die regularly due to neglect or actions by authorities, this case got more publicity. Human rights groups had the location of the minors and could have possibly prevented their deaths if they had not been actively hindered in their rescue actions by Frontex and national authorities for days. Frontex published a report blaming Bulgarian authorities for these deaths. But local activists and organisations have called out Frontex for their role in interfering with rescue actions of activists on the ground. 

Beyond the border region

Europe also benefits from the harsh system placed on people on the move once they have made it into Bulgaria. People on the move are usually taken to closed camp facilities to start their asylum process. Lyubimets detention centre in the south of Bulgaria is one of those camps. It was built in 2011 as part of Bulgaria’s efforts to prepare for the Schengen accession process. Lyubimets has 5-meter-high walls with barbed wire fences, guards patrolling, and visiting hours limited to two hours twice a week. It is a closed facility; people are never allowed to leave except when their time is up, or they manage to pay for a lawyer to appeal their stay. People are regularly detained for 18 months without trial. There is also the infamous Busmantsi detention centre, located on the outskirts of Sofia. It is known for its inhumane conditions and arbitrary detention practices. It has operated since 2006 and is also funded by the European Union. These places do not feel like a prison by accident. They are designed to do so. 

In Lyubimets and Busmantsi, as well as in other facilities, people on the move regularly report unsanitary conditions, insufficient nutrition and heating, violence by police officers, unannounced deportations, and violations of their rights to receive visitors and see lawyers as well as access to privacy and  fresh air. Infestations of bedbugs, lice, cockroaches and rats are persistent across all facilities. Medical help is rudimentary, and psychological assistance is not provided. 

Even visits by European Union committees have reported physical violence and verbal abuse by guards and inhumane living conditions. But the EU continues to finance this system of neglect. Between 2023 and 2024 alone, the European Union has provided millions of euros each year to Bulgaria for its migration policies: €45 million (2023), €141 million to Bulgaria and five other EU member states (2023), €85 million (2024) to Bulgaria and Romania, and another €20 Million (2024) to Bulgaria alone. Despite the financial support, all national detention centres are deteriorating. The capacity has decreased from 5,160 places to 3,225 in 2024 due to premises identified as unfit for living. 

The lie of voluntary return

That Bulgaria is reducing the number of positive decisions taken on asylum requests since 2023 goes hand in hand with the overall strategy of isolation and “fortressing” of the EU. For Syrians, this meant a drop of asylum approvals from 90% to 18% in 2024, even before the fall of the Assad regime. At the same time, Bulgaria has increased deportations. People who sit in detention facilities are deported quietly and without warning, not providing them the chance to appeal. 

If no deportation agreements with countries exist, pressure is increasing to sign a “voluntary” return agreement. Bulgaria launched a new Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) Programme in 2024. Three-quarters of the funding comes from the European Commission. 

Voluntary returns are defined by the United Nations refugee agency as based on a “free and informed choice”. But since the start of the programme, people have reported being forced to sign. The consequence of not signing is often (prolonged) prison time, leaving people no real choice but to agree to their own deportation. Some people have reported not receiving translations when forced to sign documents, only to later find out they agreed to a  “voluntary return”. 

These violent and degrading practices are intended to lead to despair. The hope for a more peaceful future is intentionally being destroyed. And it is working. More and more people are signing “voluntary return” papers. The EU is once again not upholding its own standards. 

If public pressure does not increase, these practices will become even more systematised. Red lines are crossed without much happening— three minors die, and business at the border continues as usual. Rather than any consequences, EU countries, above all Germany, are more frequently deporting people back to Bulgaria based on the accelerated Dublin procedure, notwithstanding family and personal ties in Germany, or the inhumane conditions people on the move face on the ground. 

What is needed is what human rights organisations have been calling for for years: safe and legal ways to seek protection in Europe, an end of violent pushbacks, abuses and arbitrary detention, more humane conditions in camps, independent observers in the border region to ensure compliance with international law, more transparency and an end to the criminalisation of people on the move and activists on the ground.