CROATIA: Croatia prepares to become EU's new external frontier by upgrading its border control and crossings

Record ID: 834707

  • Title: CROATIA: Croatia prepares to become EU's new external frontier by upgrading its border control and crossings
  • Date: 16th May 2013
  • Summary: DUBROVNIK, CROATIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) WIDE OF DUBROVNIK OLD TOWN KONAVLE, CROATIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) WIDE OF SMALL CHURCH ON HILL SURROUNDED BY FOREST POLICEMAN WITH BINOCULARS WATCHING BORDER AREA HILL WITH TREES ON TOP CLOSE OF POLICEMAN WITH BINOCULARS (SOUNDBITE) (Croatian) HEAD OF GRUDA BORDER POLICE STATION, PERO MATIC, SAYING: "This entire area that you see is pro
  • Embargoed: 31st May 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Croatia
  • City:
  • Country: Croatia
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA2IVA5W9S5IFQV7PTUEN49ZGTP
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: 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.

    "This entire area that you see is problematic, because of the great proximity of the Croatia-Montenegro border, and this is where an increased number of attempted illegal entries have been recorded in recent years," said Gruda border police station chief, Pero Matic, who is in charge of the border police patrolling the southernmost tip of Croatia's territory.
    Matic 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 Croatia becomes the bloc's 28th member and only the second former Yugoslav republic to join the EU, its borders with Serbia, Bosnia-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 vigourously 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.

    "So, right down this street, and where we are standing now, runs the border line. On my left, where these houses are, is Croatian territory, and only a few meters to the other side, is Bosnia and Herzegovina," head of Metkovic border police station, Zoran Pulic, said.

    "This is certainly a special case, and according to my knowledge there are only two other places in Europe where the border lines are only a few meters away from each other - not even tens or hundreds of meters. For example, over here is a mall that is on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a butcher's shop as well, and on this side, only ten meters away, is Croatia," Pulic added.
    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.

    "I think there not much attention is paid to people living here, it is not exactly simple living here every day, with police control, and traffic jams, we have no freedom. I cannot go to town whenever I please because I always run into traffic jams, barriers, checkpoints, and so on," unemployed Croat truck driver from Metkovic, Ivo Primorac, said.
    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.

    "The Bajakovo border crossing is on the so-called Balkan Route, which is attractive for illegal migrants. We get a considerable number of illegal entries here. The actual number is in some periods higher and in other periods lower, depending on whether those people use other points of entry. In the last four months we caught 205 persons in 34 separate cases," said border policeman at Bajakovo, Josip Perkovic.
    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.

    "In the last few years a lot has changed in terms of equipment used, the number of border police officers guarding the border, not only on the crossing but also in the wider area. We constantly get new vehicles and equipment like thermal vision cameras, binoculars, night vision devices, which are all essential for detecting illegal entries," Perkovic said.
    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.

    "The total length of the future (EU) external border of Croatia is 1,377 kilometres on land border and about 1,000 kilometres of maritime border, and there will be 95 border crossings on that external border, compared to 189 that Croatia currently has," assistant head of Croatia's border police directorate, Zoran Niceno, said. Border crossings with EU member-states will be eliminated.
    About three quarters of the funding needed is expected to come from EU's Schengen Facility Fund which 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".
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