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Croatia Upgrades Border Control Systems Against Non-EU Neighbours

As its European Union entry date nears, Croatia hopes to become an even more attractive tourist destination for Western Europeans, traditionally drawn to the country … Continue reading Croatia Upgrades Border Control Systems Against Non-EU Neighbours


As its European Union entry date nears, Croatia hopes to become an even more attractive tourist destination for Western Europeans, traditionally drawn to the country by famous sites like the ancient town of Dubrovnik on its southern Adriatic coast.

But only 40 kilometres south of Dubrovnik, Croatian border police is witnessing an entirely different side to the story.

Gruda border police station chief, Pero Matic, who is in charge of the border police patrolling the southernmost tip of Croatia’s territory said the illegal immigrants who try their luck crossing into Croatia from Montenegro mostly come from Albania and Kosovo, as well as Asian and north African countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Morocco, Tunisia and Somalia, with the goal of reaching European Union countries west of Croatia.

On July 1, when the crescent-shaped country becomes the bloc’s 28th member and only the second former Yugoslav republic to join the EU, its borders with Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro will become the EU’s new external border.

Although Croatia will not automatically join EU’s passport-free Schengen zone, preparations to upgrade and modernize its border control are already well underway.

In the past several years Croatia has almost tripled the number of border policemen to around 6,000, and new large road crossings had to be built to facilitate a stricter form of passport and customs control.

The newest such border crossing opened at Klek, some 70 kilometres north of Dubrovnik, a gateway to the so-called Neum Corridor, a short stretch of coastline belonging to modern-day Bosnia and effectively cutting Croatian territory in two, and forcing tourists and truckers to cross the external borders of the EU to go from one part of Croatia to another, negotiating long, costly queues and strict customs checks twice within the space of 20 km.

What was once a soft administrative line between Yugoslav republics, vaguely defined and ignored at will, Croatia’s new external border will become one of the most vigorously observed of frontiers, separating villages and peoples who for generations shared a single state, crossing at ease.

One of the places where this is most apparent is in the picturesque town of Metkovic, some 20 kilometres inland from the southern Adriatic coast, where the border with Bosnia runs right down a street, which now has check points on both sides. Local border police Chief Zoran Pulic said only two more places in the EU had such a border.

For the residents, popping down to a butcher’s across the road is a complex task. For the police, checking hundreds of tourist cars that pass through in the summer en route to Croatia’s Adriatic is a challenge, and residents say that the constant noise of car engines running, together with police checkpoints and controls, is unbearable.

But beyond the inconveniences lurks a more sinister problem.

One of the country’s biggest and most important border crossings is at Bajakovo, on the Croatia-Serbia border in eastern Croatia.

Like Serbia, Croatia lies on the notorious “Balkan smuggling route”, used to ferry contraband drugs and illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East to Western Europe, as well as weapons and stolen cars.

A report commissioned by the European Parliament last year said the Balkan route was one of the main five crime routes in Europe, also used for trafficking cocaine from South America.

Largely thanks to EU funds, Croatia’s border police are now equipped with thermal vision cameras and infrared binoculars, which can spot movement at night from up to several kilometres away.

Although Croatia will not automatically join EU’s passport-free Schengen zone, Croatia aims to be ready for it in two years’ time.

Each new EU member has to meet strict criteria for Schengen, which usually takes several years.

Zoran Niceno of Croatia’s border police directorate said that the main problem that needed tackling was the rising number of illegal migrants in Croatia, which is currently around 6,000 per year, with further investment in border control technology as the main area that needed improving.

The preparations will include better equipment for the border police patrolling its 1,400 kilometre land border with non-EU neighbours, and cutting the number of border crossings by half of what it currently has. In addition, Zagreb has yet to set up a computer-connected border management system at every single crossing.

About three quarters of the funding needed is expected to come from EU’s Schengen Facility Fund has 120 million euros earmarked for upgrading Croatia’s border control in the next few years.

But in spite of the enormous task at hand, Niceno said that Croatia’s goal to join Schengen by 2015 was “optimistic but feasible”.