Deputy Minister Pavlov: Our TEAOs can participate in the process of attracting highly qualified employees from third countries

"Our Trade and Economic Affairs Offices (TEAOs) of the Bulgarian embassies and consulates abroad can be involved in the process of attracting highly qualified employees from third countries to our country," said Nikolay Pavlov, Deputy Minister of Economy and Industry, in a meeting of the Economic and Social Council (ESC), which discussed and adopted an "Analysis of the possibilities to simplify and accelerate the procedures for access of third-country workers and highly qualified employees to the labour market for the needs of Bulgarian business".

Deputy Minister Pavlov pointed out that Bulgaria's commercial attachés can assist in the process by disseminating information about the Bulgarian businesses’ need for highly qualified employees. In his opinion, our TEAO representatives would be useful also by helping to reduce the long time periods to process job application forms in our country.

Pavlov also emphasised the need to keep the highly qualified employees to stay in Bulgaria, as well as to return the Bulgarians, working abroad, back to our country, which he called an enormous resource both in terms of number, and in terms of quality.

"All this should be done in line with EU regulations and it should be carefully considered so as not to create any social tension and any threat to our national security," said the Deputy Minister of Economy and also added that the issue of attracting highly qualified employees from third countries also requires good coordination between all institutions, involved in the process, so as to establish the numbers, quotas and markets which should be our target.

Deputy Minister Pavlov expressed the hope that the conclusions and recommendations in the presented analysis will be helpful to the Bulgarian employers. "The inability of businesses to find enough workforce prevents them from growing," he said.

The Ministry of Economy is directly involved in the issue of labour migration as an initiator of meetings with representatives of businesses and institutions to discuss the topic of finding highly qualified employees from third countries. In these meetings, a Draft Plan for Action in the field of Labour Migration – 2024 was drawn up, including proposals of the business for specific measures concerning legislative initiatives and administrative procedures.