In the first ten months of 2023, the Croatian police registered 62,500 actions regarding illegal crossings of the border, up 73% on the year, although there has been a fall in the last two months, shows a government report on illegal migration since Croatia joined the Schengen Area on 1 January.

Parliament will debate the report on Thursday.

The pressure on the border kept increasing until the end of the summer, but illegal crossings in September dropped by 7% from August and in October by 45% from September. In October, the annual drop was 51%.

The biggest pressure remains in Karlovac County, where 21,500 police actions regarding illegal crossings were registered, notably in Cetingrad and Slunj.

The migrant route has changed, with most migrants crossing the Sava river in Brod-Posavina County early this year, while now most are entering in Karlovac, Sisak-Moslavina and Lika-Senj counties. The Interior Ministry estimates those areas will remain under pressure because they are close to another EU member state, the reception centres in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and smuggling networks.

All persons who illegally entered Croatia were processed and entered in the EURODAC database, the government says.

The rise in illegal migration has resulted in more asylum seekers. In the first ten months of 2023, Croatia registered 60,400, almost five times as many as in all of 2022. Nearly all of them attempt to illegally cross into Western Europe, abusing the asylum system, the report notes.

Also, 47% of asylum seekers never check in at the reception centres in Zagreb and Kutina.

On their routes, migrants can cause insecurity and fear but compared with the actual security threat, indicators show that those fears are unfounded, the government says, adding that the number of migrants committing offences against the public order and property is negligible.

In the first ten months of 2023, 1,016 illegal entries and stays in Croatia were recorded, up by one-third on the year.

The number of migrant smugglers also grew and 70% of them are foreigners, while the rest are Croatian citizens.

The government warns in the report that the number of migrant arrivals in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been rising since the start of the year and is the highest in the last five years.

This year to 22 October, nearly 28,000 arrivals were registered, up 54% on the year, although records in BiH are neither centralised nor accurate and according to International Organisation for Migration data, the figure is 51,239.

Furthermore, BiH does not register Turkish and Russian citizens because they don’t need a visa to enter, which makes it harder to monitor the actual number of migrants in BiH and the migration burden on Croatia.

In the last year, the number of Turkish and Russian citizens legally entering BiH has increased. 10,512 Turks illegally crossed the border, while 7,483 Russians did so legally and applied for international protection which, if added to the IOM data, accounts for over 69,000 persons who want to illegally reach an EU destination.

Of the total number of illegal migrants in Croatia, about 13,000, from Turkey, China, Cuba and Russia, easily reached the external EU border because of non-aligned visa regimes in BiH and Serbia, the report says.