Slovenia to Remove Border Fence With Croatia by the End of This Year

Such a decision has also been confirmed by Slovenia’s Interior Ministry, AtoZSerwisPlus.com reports.

Authorities in Slovenia started to construct such a fence in 2015 during the European refugee crisis when many people fled to European Union countries from Syria.

The fence’s main purpose was to prevent illegal migration into Slovenia through the Balkans.

In April 2020, the Slovenian government announced that it would put more fencing on the border with its neighbouring country Croatia to curb illegal crossing. The same Ministry announced that nearly 40km of temporary fencing would be erected during that year; however it did not clarify specifically where.

Slovenia shares a 670-kilometre-long border with Croatia, which means that roughly a third of their shared border has been fortified with a fence.

Slovenia’s new government has announced that it plans to change the country’s border policies. The left-liberal government under Prime Minister Robert Golob said that it would demolish the border fence in its coalition agreement. They also unfolded plans to instead monitor the border with drones and cameras.

Earlier this month, authorities in Slovenia announced that there were reported a total of 3,107 cases of illegal migration during the first four months of this year. The same source shows that citizens of Afghanistan accounted for more than a quarter of all illegal migrants intercepted for a period from January until April, according to the data provided by the police.

Based on the figures provided by the Slovenian police, for the first time, Cuba ranks among the ten countries from which the largest number of migrants entered Slovenia, with a total of 152 Cuban migrants handled during the same period.

At the same time, the number of requests for international protection was five times higher compared to the figures of the same period last year, totalling 2,740.

Western Balkan countries continue to receive a large number of irregular border crossings.

Based on the recent data provided by the European Border and Coast Agency, Frontex, 23,500 illegal border crossings were registered in May, which marks 27 per cent of all detections recorded in the EU’s external borders since the start of this year.

Frontex data showed that between January and May, 86,420 people attempted to reach European Union countries by illegally crossing EU’s external borders, making a total of 82 per cent compared to the figures of the same period one year earlier.