15 | PROTECTING STATELESS PERSONS FROM ARBITRARY DETENTION IN BULGARIA asylum seekers in Bulgaria since 2013,46 detention has been seen by the Bulgarian authorities as a tool for migration management. Furthermore, the transposition of the Recast Reception Conditions Directive has been seen as an opportunity to extend detention also to asylum seekers.47 Stateless persons in Bulgaria have so far been placed in immigration detention both when they have entered the country to seek asylum, prior to being given access to the asylum procedure,48 and upon their detection on the territory of Bulgaria as illegally staying persons. The Bulgarian law provides for periodic review of the length of detention in accordance with Article 15, paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 of the EU Return Directive. In the first preliminary ruling request under the EU Return Directive made in relation to the prolonged detention of Mr. Kadzoev, a stateless person detained in Bulgaria, the CJEU stated that a reasonable prospect of removal “does not exist where it appears unlikely that the person concerned will be admitted to a third country”49. “It must therefore be apparent, at the time of the national court’s review of the lawfulness of detention, that a real prospect exists that the removal can be carried out successfully, having regard to the periods laid down in Article 15(5) and (6) of Directive 2008/115, for it to be possible to consider that there is a ‘reasonable prospect of removal’ within the meaning of Article 15(4) of that directive.”50 Mr. Kadzoev, a stateless person from Chechenia, spent over three years in immigration detention in Bulgaria (from 21 October 2006 until 3 December 2009), after which he was released back in Bulgaria as an undocumented migrant. The major change brought by the Kadzoev case51 has been that it subsequently led also to the amendment in the Law on Foreign Nationals in the Republic of Bulgaria in August 2013 (State Gazette No.70/2013) by which Article 44, paragraph 8 of the LFRB was changed to explicitly state that “[w]hen in the light of the particular circumstances of the case it is established that there is no reasonable possibility for legal or technical reasons for the forced removal of the foreigner, the person shall be released immediately”. 2.3 DATA ON STATELESSNESS AND DETENTION IN BULGARIA The total number of immigration detainees in Bulgaria in 2012 was 2,477. In 2013 this rose to 7,463. While in 2014 it dropped to 4,810 it rose again in 2015 to 11,902.52 Furthermore, in 2015, there were 15,760 persons detained at the so-called ‘Redistribution Centre’ at Elhovo near the Bulgarian-Turkish border.53 In the first five months of 2016, the total number of detainees at the three detention centres in Bulgaria has been as follows (see Table 1): Table 1: Total (cumulative) number of detainees in Bulgaria in the period from January to May 2016 Detention Centre Number of detainees Bousmantsi (Sofia) 1,517 Lyubimets 1,610 Elhovo 4,363 On 31 May 2016 the Ministry of Interior reported that there were 585 detainees in Bulgaria, while the detention capacity in the country is 940 detainees.54 Regarding detainees belonging to vulnerable groups, detailed information and official statistics are provided in Section 3.5 below. As pointed out above, upon detention in Bulgaria stateless persons are usually assigned to a country of origin that they are deemed to have come from or have some cultural or historical link with. In the removal and detention orders stateless persons are identified as citizens of those countries.55 Therefore the validity of official statistical data regarding stateless persons in detention should be addressed with caution. According to the Ministry of Interior statistics,56 the number of stateless persons in detention varies from one person to 38 persons annually in the period from 2007 until 2016. The exact numbers are provided in Table 2 below. Table 2: Number of stateless detainees in Bulgaria by detention centre Lyubimets Elhovo 2007 Bousmantsi (Sofia) 1 - - 2008 9 - - 2009 6 - - Year 2010 10 - - 2011 4 1 - 2012 6 20 - 2013 16 22 - 2014 1 3 7 2015 13 9 9 1.01.31.05.2016 As of 15 June 2016 2 0 0 3 0 3 According to the reply by the Ministry of the Interior,57 the average length of detention of the stateless persons in the table above has been 118.5 days in the Bousmantsi (Sofia) detention centre, 28 days in the Lyubimets detention centre and seven days in the Elhovo detention centre. In comparison, the average length of detention for all detained migrants in the Bousmantsi (Sofia) detention