Croatia and Slovenia will expand their cooperation in an effort to reduce the entry of illegal migrants and their police officers will conduct joint patrols in implementing "compensatory measures", Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said on Thursday.

“We will expand the existing cooperation with Slovenia. This year we had about 450 joint patrols and now we agreed that, in implementing the compensatory measures, Croatian police will be at the checkpoints as well,” he said in Brussels after talks with Slovenian Interior Minister Bostjan Poklukar.

Slovenia yesterday set up checkpoints along the border with Croatia due to an increase in the number of illegal entries. Bozinovic said this received undue public attention because Croatian police were practicing the same thing as part of the compensatory measures in place since Croatia’s accession to the Schengen Area on 1 January.

Croatian police officers will also be on those checkpoints, he said, “because we are conducting a joint operation and there is no need whatsoever to make it out to be something that it isn’t.”

“When we were entering Schengen, we said we would reassign some border police officers for the compensatory measures which replace border checks,” he added.

Illegal migration is to a large extent run by organised crime groups, Bozinovic said, adding that according to a local police commander, Afghan and Pakistani gangs operate in Una-Sana Canton in Bosnia and Herzegovina and some of their members were arrested recently.

“The European Union can’t let smugglers decide who will enter its territory. We know that this is a lucrative business and maybe one of the most profitable criminal activities, more profitable than even the narcotics trade,” he said.

He ruled out the possibility of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, coming to the Croatian side of the border with Slovenia because, he said, Croatian police “are absolutely sufficient” for that job.

On the other hand, Croatia expects the pressure on its borders to decrease once Bosnia and Herzegovina signs a status agreement with Frontex, which will facilitate the deployment of European border police on the BiH side of the border.

EU interior ministers are expected to vote in today the last element of a new legislative package on migration and asylum, a common position on a draft regulation on crisis management on the external borders.

Bozinovic hopes the whole package will be adopted before the end of the term of the current Commission and Parliament because, he said, it is in everyone’s interest to ensure controlled entries.

“That’s an important step in the creation of conditions for controlled migrant entries, but it’s not the end of the illegal migration story. There will be (illegal migration) as long as Europe is a far better place to live than the lands and continents from which immigrants are coming.”

Reaching an agreement is not easy due to the different interests and positions of the member states, because it’s not the same to be on the external borders or deep within the EU, he said, adding that the countries of first entry are not the final destinations of the people coming to Europe in search of a better life.