ZAGREB, March 6, 2020 – President Zoran Milanović said on Friday the National Security Council did not discuss sending army to the border or changing the law to give the army different powers than those currently envisaged by the constitution.
“We know the army’s tasks. It protects the integrity, independence and sovereignty of the state. Those are difficult categories and a migrant crisis is not a threat to them,” Milanović told reporters a day after the National Security Council discussed the possibility of the army helping the police in case of a new migrant crisis.
At this moment, the army is not needed on the border, as could be seen in the press release issued after the meeting, which does not mention it at all, the president said.
The situation is being followed in the hope that it will not come to it that the army has to help the police as it did in 2015, he said, referring to that year’s migrant wave. “In 2015, the Croatian army did a huge job without any legislative framework.”
As for calls by the Croatian Sovereigntists party to amend the law and give the military different powers in case of a crisis as Slovenia has done, the president said Slovenia’s deterrence tactic was “an operetta.”
“In Slovenia it’s been done so that soldiers walk along the border together with the police. The police are armed, the soldiers aren’t. I don’t want Croatian soldiers on the border with their hands in their pockets. We don’t want them with weapons either, we see no need for that,” said Milanovic.
More news about the migrant crisis can be found in the Politics section.
