Croatia should do more to prevent illegal migration if it wants to join the Schengen Area, warned Slovenian Caretaker Prime Minister Miro Cerar on Tuesday, and added that Croatia must respect the rule of law.

After meeting with leaders of the parties in the newly-elected parliament, in which illegal migration was one of the main topics, Cerar said that he was worried about the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, adding that the country did not have the proper mechanisms to face the problems surrounding migration.

“We need to start dealing with this so that we would not end up with a great concentration of migrants on the external Schengen border,” Cerar said.

He added that the party leaders supported his caretaker government’s measures regarding increased military and police presence on the border with Croatia.

“Of course it’s in Slovenia’s interest for Croatia to join Schengen because it would make border protection easier, but the Croatian government must fulfil the conditions for that, and prove that it is capable of efficiently protecting the border, while at the same time show it’s prepared to respect the legal principles and European regulations,” Cerar said after the meeting.

He said that he saw no way that any country would support Croatia’s joining Schengen unless Croatia respected the rule of law.
Slovenia maintains that Croatia is breaking the rule of law by refusing to implement the border arbitration decision, reached in June 2017, which determined the land and sea borders between the two countries. Croatia does not recognise the arbitration ruling, and earlier in June, the European Commission decided to stay neutral in the dispute and leave the two countries to solve the issue between themselves.

According to Slovenian media, Slovenia intends to go through with the planned lawsuit at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) against Croatia even without the support from the European Commission.

The influx of migrants in the region is nowhere near the levels from 2015/2016, the height of the migrant crisis in Europe, but there are still active “criminal groups” of people smugglers who Slovenia is successfully resisting and protecting the Schengen external border, Cerar said.

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