ZAGREB, June 13, 2018 – The director of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Office for Foreigners, Slobodan Ujić, said in Sarajevo on Tuesday that the country’s authorities would close the border with Serbia and Montenegro to migrants if Croatia and other European Union member states did so.
“The only right response to that would be enhanced border control and deployment of additional forces on the border with our eastern neighbours, however, should the borders be closed, we too will have no other alternative but to close our border with Serbia and Montenegro,” Ujić said.
He explained that the Bosnian authorities had received information from Austria of its intention to completely shut down the border to migrants and of announcements that Slovenia and Croatia were going to do the same.
Ujić added that 65 to 80 migrants were entering the country on a daily basis. Since the end of last year, 6,257 migrants have been registered to have entered Bosnia and Herzegovina and 5,635 have applied for international protection.
Ujić warned that only one in five migrants arrived from war zones while the majority were economic migrants. “This is mixed migration, with only 20% of migrants being refugees, while the rest are economic migrants, including many families with children, who are coming from 45 different countries,” Ujić said.
He announced that local authorities would soon convert an army barracks not far from Sarajevo into a reception centre for migrants and that a large number of refugees currently located in the northwestern Una-Sana Canton would be accommodated in the compound of the now defunct Agrokomerc food company in Velika Kladuša.
