Croatia's Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said on Sunday that citizens' reaction during the first week of Croatia's membership of the Schengen passport-free travel area was positive, adding that Croatia had convinced the European Union it was capable of safeguarding its external borders.

“We needed to convince Europe that we are capable of safeguarding the external borders while showing in practice that we know how to treat vulnerable people,” Bozinovic told Hina during a visit to the northern Adriatic city of Pula.

Bozinovic was visiting Istria County to see for himself how the Schengen regime was functioning after Croatia joined the EU’s borderless area on 1 January 2023.

In Istria County, seven border crossing points with Slovenia had been in operation until 31 December 2022. Last year they were used by 20,796,168 passengers and 6,366,279 vehicles.

Bozinovic visited the former border crossing points Kastel and Plovania and checked the situation on the ground as far as Trieste, Italy. He said that although “legally and politically inevitable,” the borders that existed all these years “were not natural for our people in modern Europe,” and that the border areas would be the first to experience the huge benefits of Schengen membership.

“The first test was the thousands of people travelling to ski resorts in Slovenia, Austria, Germany and Switzerland this weekend, without any traffic jams. This is also a new situation for our business people who will certainly get new ideas thanks to Schengen and eurozone membership,” he said.

Speaking of irregular migration, Bozinovic said that over 5,000 human traffickers had been arrested as part of Operation Corridor.

“We were often accused in the media of violence against migrants. That was not a simple situation. We checked each accusation and rejected the unjustified attacks on the police. The outcome is that we are now a Schengen member protecting the external borders and are fully aware of our new tasks,” Bozinovic said.

He said that 770 police officers would be profiling persons and vehicles after the abolition of border controls at the border with Slovenia and Hungary. He said that about 70 police officers in Istria were engaged in this new line of work, adding that they had checked 131 vehicles and 274 persons in the first five days.

A total of 111 migrants were deterred from entering Slovenia illegally, 81 persons who attempted to illegally reach western European countries applied for international protection, three persons found to be staying in Croatia illegally were expelled for three months, and several were prosecuted for illegal drug possession, Bozinovic said.