Tommaso Siviero and Vuk TesijaSarajevo, ZagrebBIRNMarch 20, 202317:36As the number of migrants arriving in Rijeka, a Croatian city near the Slovenian and Italian borders, rises, Rome calls for Italian-Croatian-Slovenian meeting to coordinate border security.
Rijeka, Croatia. Since October 2022, the number of migrants arriving ranges from a hundred to 200 people per day.Photo:BIRN
As the number of migrants arriving in Rijeka, Croatia, near the Slovenian and Italian borders, rises to some 200 a day, Italy has called for a three-way Italian-Slovenian-Croatian meeting in Rome to discuss ways to tighten border controls.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajanion on Friday announced that a meeting will be held “in Rome in the coming weeks with Slovenia and Croatia to find a form of collaboration regarding the [migrants’] ‘Balkan route’.”
The announcement followed a meeting in Ljubljana between the Italian minister and his Slovenian counterpart, Tanja Fajon, where the two discussed migration.
Italy has been talking for months about a “high-level meeting” on the so-called “Balkan route” of migration to address an issue that the right-wing Rome government has been prioritizing without success since it came to power following September 2022 elections.
Prior to the meeting, sources cited by Slovenian news agency Sta suggested that joint Slovenian-Croatian-Italian police patrols were being considered among the options for better control of the borders.
Fajon told Tajani: “We are looking at ways for Italy, Slovenia and Croatia to jointly secure the external Schengen border”. Croatia joined the passport-free Schengen area in January.
Gordana Brkic Zagar, spokeswoman for the City of Rijeka, told BIRN the city was feeding and offering other forms of help to up to 200 arrivals a day.
“Since October 25, 2022, the City of Rijeka has financed the preparation and distribution of 200 meals a day for migrants, and from March 1, 2023, Caritas of the Archdiocese of Rijeka took over the financing the meals. The area where the migrants stay is regularly cleaned and a sanitary station has been set up where the migrants can shower and change clothes,” she explained.
Some 20,046 boat migrants arrived in Italy so far this year, a record number, putting the country on course to beat the all-time high for arrivals set in 2016, when 181,436 people reached Italy in boats, Reuters has reported. According to unofficial UN data, 12,000 of those set sail from Tunisia.
At least 86 migrants drowned in southern Italy late last month, prompting a blame game about who was responsible.
The Western Balkan route was, in 2022, the most used for illegal border crossings into the EU, according to the bloc’s external border agency, Frontex, Euronews has reported. It said the force recorded 145,000 illegal crossings through the Western Balkans, a 136 per cent rise from the previous year and the highest number observed since 2015.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
