European Commission spokesperson for home affairs, Adalbert Jahnz, on Thursday "conveyed the Commission's concern over reports of violent pushbacks at the external borders of Greece and Croatia," state agency Hina reported.

The video footage and reports of violent pushbacks at the external borders, which were released yesterday, are very worrisome. Violence and the ill-treatment of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees are unacceptable, and an investigation must be conducted, the spokesman said in Brussels today, commenting on the video footage and reports released by some media outlets on Wednesday.

Yesterday, the commercial RTL broadcaster showed videos of men wearing ski masks pushing back migrants from Croatia across a backwater of the Korana river, hitting them with batons such as those used by riot police. Some of the men also wore vests like those of riot police.

RTL said the footage was from June and that it was taken during an eight-month journalistic investigation in which an RTL crew took part with colleagues from Lighthouse Reports, an investigative journalistic network based in the Netherlands, from the Swiss SRF Rundschau, the German ARD, ARD Monitor, the French Liberation, the Dutch Pointer, the Croatian Novosti, and the German Der Spiegel.

The European Commission is strongly against any practice of violent pushbacks, they are against the law, and national authorities are expected to conduct investigations to establish the facts and take action accordingly, if necessary, said Jahnz.

Earlier on Thursday, Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said that an investigation was launched to see who was involved in an incident of violence against migrants on the border, recorded on video, adding that the Croatian police did not tolerate the overstepping of authority, of which there must be proof.

“An expert team is already in the field and has the task to establish what happened, who was involved and where it happened,” Božinović told the press when asked to comment on the footage, shown in a number of countries yesterday.