Slovenian PM Cerar: Fence on Croatian Border Will Not Be Removed

The latest on the migrant crisis and Slovenian fence.

In an interview with Slovenian Radio, Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar once again defended his government’s decision to set up wire fence on the border with Croatia, saying that there is still an excessive influx of refugees via the Balkan route, and that Croatia is not cooperating enough to reduce the daily inflows. He added that there is danger of a new, much larger wave of migrants which may come in the spring of next year, reports Index on December 24, 2015.

“We still have 3,000 to 5,000 refugees arriving every day, and these are huge numbers. But, on the European borders there are millions more who want to come to Europe. That is a realistic assessment”, Cerar said in an interview with the national radio service . He based his remarks on assessments by the intelligence services and on his conversation with the Turkish Prime Minister, with whom he met in Brussels before the recent European Union summit where they also discussed the refugee crisis.

According to Cerar, next spring millions of refugees could move from camps in Turkey towards Europe. These would not be just refugees from war-torn areas such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, but also economic migrants from Africa. In the Turkish refugee centres, there are more and more people from North Africa, particularly from Morocco and Algeria, and a large number of Africans who want to come to Europe, fleeing not only from dictatorial regimes, but also from hunger and poverty which are being caused by climate change, said Cerar, adding that they were a completely new type of migrants in comparison with those who are arriving now.

That is why technical barriers and wire fences on the border with Croatia are still needed, as long as this risk is not eliminated, Cerar said, adding that he needs to see how the agreements between the EU and Turkey on reducing the refugee pressure will be implemented.

If the European Union does not stop this large wave, Croatia could against start sending these migrants across the Slovenian border without control and agreement with Ljubljana, so there could be tens of thousands of refugees left in Slovenia, which would cause humanitarian disaster, the Slovenian Prime Minister said.

Reacting to claims of local communities in Istria and the Slovenian coastal areas that the fence in that region is not needed because migrants have never been seen there, Cerar said that they do not have all the information like him and that there is a chance that Croatia could direct a large number of migrants to Slovenia and Italy by land and sea through Dalmatia and Istria.

From midnight to 9 am on Thursday, 1,095 refugees entered Croatia. There were just 7 persons accommodated at the temporary reception centre in Slavonski Brod. Since the beginning of the migration crisis, 530,667 migrants and refugees have passed through Croatia.

The number of refugees and migrants who have arrived in the EU by land and sea this year has exceeded a million, with 3,600 of them having died or disappeared along the way, reported the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). UNHCR expects similar influx to continue in 2016, while a spokesman for the IOM Joel Millman says it is impossible to predict precise figures.

 

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