The biggest impact of Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union yesterday could be on Dundee, a city best known for producing marmalade, The Beano and The Dandy.

The Institute for Public Policy and Research estimates that 15,000 Bulgarians will exercise their new right to move to Britain. And according to a report by Nikolai Zhelev, Bulgaria’s honorary consul in Scotland and a professor at Abertay University in Dundee, about 1,000 of them will bypass London and Edinburgh and head straight for the Tayside city to join the community of 1,500 Bulgarians who already live there. Only 600 Bulgarians who live legally in Scotland have settled outside Dundee.

Part of its appeal is cheap housing and the availability of seasonal work on farms in the surrounding countryside of Perthshire and Angus.

The Bulgarian community has established its own church in the city, the fourth largest in Scotland, and Rumen Petkov, the Bulgarian Interior Minister, is due to visit this month.

The wave of new residents has stemmed the decline of the city’s population which had fallen from almost 200,000 in the early 1970s to just over 142,000.

Professor Zhelev said that Bulgaria’s accession to the EU would also boost the local economy. The newcomers would include a large number of farmers, technicians, doctors and nurses.

He said: “Dundee is the centre of Scotland, not only geographically but in the scientific, technological and agricultural sense.

“Like many Ukrainians, Russians and Poles, lots of Bulgarians are farmers by trade and the 2,100 or so who are currently working in Scotland have helped to revive the country’s farming industry. But it’s not just farmers who will be coming over. Bulgaria has a high number of intellectual and medical staff who will be coming to work in the universities and hospitals.”

Far from creating further problems for an already over-burdened NHS, the influx would invigorate the workforce of the city, which is the leading Scottish centre for new industries such as software development and biotechnology.

Professor Zhelev said: “Most of the migrants are healthy young workers who come over and are net contributors to the economy. The migrants that are already here are filling up spaces in the understaffed nursing jobs and Bulgaria has three times as many doctors per capita as Scotland.”

The migration is not all one way. Professor Zhelev’s report also found a surprisingly large number of Scots emigrating to Bulgaria. One village on the outskirts of the Bulgarian town of Kavarna is populated almost entirely by Dundonians.

He said: “Property and land prices are very good in Bulgaria so there is also now a high demand amongst Scottish people to buy property over there — people who want to settle somewhere other than Scotland as they get older — leading to an outward migration of Scots.”

Figures from the Institute for Public Policy and Research also estimate that 41,000 Romanians will come to work in Britain during the coming year.

FOREIGN CHARM

DUNDEE

City of jute, jam and journalism and Dennis the Menace. Population 142,170. Birthplace of the actor Brian Cox and the MP and Celebrity Big Brother star, George Galloway. Home to the RRS Discovery, used by Captain Scott on the 1901-04 expedition to the Antarctic. Twinned with the Palestinian Nablus

SOFIA

Capital of Bulgaria. Has a population of 1,246,000. Boasts a Unesco World Heritage site in the 10th- century Boyana church and a booming film industry, as well as Vitosha Boulevard — ranked as the 22nd most expensive commercial street in the world

Source: Times database, GRO Scotland

Times Recommends

• C&G axed - 1,660 jobs to be lost
• UK house prices rise 1.1% as buyers return
• Mixed reaction to US banks repaying bailouts