Croatian human rights groups Centre for Peace Studies (CMS) and Are You Syrious? [sic] sent an open letter to Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Wednesday, commenting on the recent crisis on the Greek-Turskih border and calling for a reform of the common European asylum policy.

The two groups sent the letter on behalf of Forum 2020, a larger NGO platform formed in July last year to advocate for human rights issues, rule of law, and sustainable development ahead of Croatia’s presidency of the EU in the first half of 2020.

Speaking of the current refugee crisis on the Greek-Turkish border, NGOs slammed recent announcements that Croatia would use “all means available” to help protect EU’s external borders, which could possibly result in the army being deployed on Croatia’s border with Bosnia.

Forum 2020 reminded Plenkovic that ahead of the EU presidency he had announced he would call for the reform of EU’s common asylum policy CEAS. The system, overseen by the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) based in Malta, was devised to standardise treatment of asylum seekers across the EU, although in practice much leeway was left to individual countries to implement the rules the way they see fit.

On Sunday, Greece said that is suspended accepting asylum applications for at least a month after Turkey had decided to allow thousands of migrants and refugees to travel freely westward towards Europe.

In the unprecedented migrant crisis of 2015-16 about a million refugees and migrants from the Middle East had travelled via the so-called Balkan route to seek asylum in Western Europe, a flow of people which stopped only after the EU signed an agreement with Turkey to hold incoming people in Turkey in exchange for generous EU funding.

But in the wake of escalating violence following Turkey’s military campaigns on its southern border with Syria, Turkey’s leader Erdogan threatened that the country would let migrants and refugees flood its border with Greece, in a move widely seen as a way to leverage EU support for its involvement in Syria.

However, the response of Greece, which simply suspended the asylum system, drew mixed reactions. While human rights watchdogs and groups around the world condemned the decision, including the inter-governmental Council of Europe human rights association, and the British-based Amnesty International, the move  was praised by top EU officials, including Plenkovic, who visited the Greek border town of Kastanies on Tuesday.

“Given that in your announcements of the presidency, you said the Croatian government would push for a reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and better cooperation with third countries, which includes Southeast Europe, Forum 2020 believes your first step in the context of the latest situation should be in that direction,” the NGOs said.

They added that Plenkovic had said in 2016 that reforming the CEAS was an important step towards a more equitable solution to the refugee crisis by sharing responsibility and solidarity of all member states in receiving incoming refugees and migrants.

However, they said, Plenkovic has not actively pushed for that policy over the past four years, and instead allowed Croatia to take on the EU’s “heavy burden… of the inhumane treatment of refugees and migrants, and violations of their human rights.”

The CEAS must be based on human rights, it must have clear goals, it must remove the anomalies of the current system, and its reform must protect and strengthen and not reduce the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, the NGOs said.

They went on to attribute the current crisis on EU’s external borders to what they described as “inadequate EU policies, primarily harmful agreements with Turkey and Libya, which violate human rights and build their positions on blackmail, undermining respect for human dignity and the rule of law which the EU has the duty to protect.”

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