For forth consecutive day, travelers from Balkan and central-European countries are waiting up to 5 hours inside their vehicles and under the boiling sun in order to cross into Greece. Promachonas border-crossing cannot deal with the volume of travelers with the effect that the queues extend up to 10-12 km inside Bulgaria on Saturday morning.
Promachonas is currently the only border-crossing open in North Greece for road tourists.
According to state broadcaster ERT TV, travelers come mainly from Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, but also Greeks living in Germany.
Next to the customs formalities especially for the Serbs, four health teams conduct COVID-19 tests where they consider it as necessary.
20 buses with tourists from Serbia have crossed into Greece since early morning Saturday, ERT reported. tourists form Serbia normally use the Evzoni border-crossing that remains closed to leisure travelers.
An average of 21,000-22,000 vehicles passed through Promachonas in the last 3 days.
On Friday, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry summoned the Greek Ambassador to Sofia to raise the issue and discuss the new rules for entering Greece.
Bulgarian Deputy Foreign Minister Petko Doykov reportedly stressed the difficult situation at the Kulata-Promachonas border checkpoint and the long queues that can bee seen, which are causing great disturbance to the citizens. The Bulgarian side also raised the issue of creating separate corridors at the border for European Union citizens and third countries, in order to speed up the passage.
The Greek Ambassador said that this was not possible and that he would convey Sofia’s concerns to Athens.
According to ERT, the opening of another check point would solve the issue.
Please open Evzoni border as we come from Slovenia and we go to more western side of Greece towards the Athens and Evia, why making a circle around Bulgaria and losing 5+hours waiting and 1 hour more in transit at least?! There is no point. I urge Greek government to open Evzonoi faster. Thank you.
We will go from Burgas over Kulata because we are forced to go over there, because our point where we would have needed to pass, Makaza, has been closed. It is really outraging how unplanned all of this happens. There will be only negative consequences for Greece: 1. People like us from Bulgaria will think twice before ever again planning holidays in Greece, while we have been fans of holidays in Greece until now. Luckily this year we do not spend the vacaction on the island Thassos like we usually do, in this case we would have cancelled our holiday right away on the spot. 2. All the tourist industry in the East of Greece will loose a fortune of revenue, and the state by this as well, 3. Through the masses of people waiting in 15 km queues, forcibly the people will go out of the cars and also build crowds and in this way the virus will spread even more, which is allegedly tried to avoid by closing all other border points. Greece, please make and end of this mess, and of doing harm to your own people and tourism by this.
Why is Evzoni closed? I am Serbian. We can enter Greece via Bulgaria, but not via North Macedonia. If the situation with Covid in Serbia is bad, then do not let us in at all. But if you do let us in, then why do we- and all other travellers from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary etc. – have to be tortured? 15 km long queue today. This is humiliating.
A huge disapointment and missmanagement at its best. The greek government is responsible for people including smal children burning in cars at 36degrees Celsius without water ( bulgarian officials do not care) at the border crossing. We been waiting for 6.5 hours, being austrian citizens. Unlike offically published, evzoni border crossing is not restricted to ” essential” travel, but to greek citizens, as the officials told me on the phone. with greek passport there is no problem crossing at evzoni. Thats discriminating all other eu citizens.
Last time they seen me as a tourist. Sorry guys. Thats inhuman.