Croatia to Find Itself on the Wrong Side of European Border Fence?

The latest on European fence politics. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel met yesterday in Berlin with Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar who presented his proposal for stricter controls of illegal border crossings on the Balkan refugee route, which he will present in the next few days to other European leaders as well. He believes that it would ensure effective solution for the refugee crisis on the Balkan and Central European refugee route, reports Novilist on January 14, 2016.

Cerar believes that, if this issue is not resolved in the coming weeks and months, Europe could be threatened by a severe crisis which could put new walls between European states and consequently lead to the disintegration of the EU. After the meeting, the Slovenian Prime Minister reported that Chancellor Merkel had agreed that Europe must continue to seek a common solution for the refugee problem at its source, in Syria, Libya and elsewhere, with better protection of the external borders of the EU.

As reported by Slovenian television, Slovenia and Germany have agreed to gradually stem the “illegal refugee wave”, which should eventually be completely stopped, with a fair distribution of the refugee burden in all EU member states. Austrian Kronen Zeitung reported the details of Cerar’s project whose goal is to restrict the arrival of refugees to the EU together with Austria and Germany. The project is based on the establishment of strict border controls on the Slovenian-Croatian border, which would be conducted jointly by Slovenian, German and Austrian police.

According to the Austrian newspaper citing unofficial information, the plan is the result of good cooperation between the three countries, Slovenia, Austria and Germany, during the refugee crisis. Austrian government could adopt decisions as early as today which would implement stricter policies towards migrants and border controls. According to the Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the goal is to stop illegal crossings of the Austrian border and to return economic migrants.

The new monitoring system will first be applied at the Šentilj border crossing between Slovenia and Austria, but soon German and Austrian police officers could come to the aid of their Slovenian colleagues on the Croatian border. Austria is reportedly also planning to use the military to establish better control of its green border.

On the other hand, Spiegel writes that Austria wants to arrange with Slovenia and Croatia the mediation of Austrian police on the Slovenian and Croatian borders, in order to stop the migrants who could try to cross the borders without documents or with forged documents.

If these reports turn out to be true and if the strict system of the Slovenian-Austrian-German police controls on the Slovenian-Croatian border is indeed established, Croatia would find itself on the other side of this new wall, which could be considered a kind of punishment for Croatia which has refused to respond to demands from the EU to register refugees in accordance with the Schengen rules and to separate refugees from economic migrants. While it would be logical for such controls to be established at the Croatian border with Serbia, it seems that stricter border controls could be established on the Slovenian-Croatian border instead.

 

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