Eastern European Union member state Bulgaria has become the latest nation to either signal or confirm that it would be withdrawing from the United Nations (UN) Migration Compact, following a growing exodus from the plan led by the United States.
The announcement came in Bulgaria’s parliament, with a debate set to take place on Wednesday. The ruling coalition holds a two-seat majority which means the motion will probably pass, with centre-right politician Tsvetan Tsvetanov telling the floor Monday: “the position of the Bulgarian government will be not to join the United Nations’ global pact on migration.”
The so-called Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, commonly known as the UN Migration Plan, will be formally ratified at a meeting of UN member states in Marrakech, Morocco in a months time. But half a dozen nations have now said they will not attend the summit, despite all UN members states except the United States of America having initially said they would sign.
President Trump rejected the document which he characterised as envisioning a world where there would be “no borders, everyone can come in”. The White House later said the plan was “simply not compatible with US sovereignty”.
Hungary was the first to formally signal it would not be joining after the U.S. when it said in July that “This document is entirely against Hungary’s security interests… Its main premise is that migration is a good and inevitable phenomenon … We consider migration a bad process, which has extremely serious security implications.”
Austria also cited concerns over national sovereignty when it announced it would withdraw from the pact in October when the government was reported as having raised serious concerns about the “content and objectives” of the UN compact.
In advance of the decision, Austrian Chancellor Kurz said: “We view some of the points in this agreement very critically. We will, therefore, do everything to maintain the sovereignty of our country and ensure that we as the Republic of Austria can decide for ourselves on migration issues.”
Poland, the Czech Republic, and Croatia have also signalled they would not be participating. Defenders of the UN plan insist the document is not legally binding.
Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook