ZAGREB, February 7, 2018 – A new building housing the offices of Croatian border police was opened at Cetingrad near the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, on Wednesday.
The new border police station, which is also a police training centre, cost 1.1 million kuna, obtained from the IPA 2012 fund.
The station, which is in charge of controlling 33 kilometres of the river border and slightly more than 22 kilometres of the land border, employs 164 people. Border police from this station perform border checks at five border crossings – the international border crossing of Maljevac and the local border crossings Pašin Potok, Gejkovac, Bogovolja and Kordunski Ljeskovac.
The new station at Cetingrad, apart from office space, also includes lounges and recreation rooms, identification rooms, a hall for the reception of a larger number of people and prison cells.
Minister of the Interior Davor Božinović, who attended the opening ceremony, was asked if Croatia had met all conditions for joining the Schengen area of passport-free movement, to which he said that Croatia had shown that there were no unattainable goals for it and that his ministry was working intensively on meeting all technical requirements.
Commenting on police conduct involving illegal migrants, Božinović said that the United Nations differentiated between refugees and illegal migrants and that “there is no country in the world that does not protect its borders from illegal migrants.”
That is a policy of Croatia, the European Commission and all EU member countries and their ministers of the interior conduct intensive talks on the matter, he said, adding that investments such as the Cetingrad border police station were important for the prevention of illegal border crossings.
In 2017, most of the 202 persons caught while trying to illegally cross the state border in the area covered by the Karlovac County Police Department, were Kosovo nationals, followed by nationals of Turkey, Afghanistan, Syria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Libya and Slovenia.
