Long queues at the Bajakovo road crossing on the Croatia-Serbia border this past weekend "had nothing to do Croatia becoming a member of the Schengen Area," and was in fact related to the state news platform Hina quoted Interior Minister, Davor Bozinovic, as saying on Monday.

In a reply to a query from Hina, Bozinovic said that the long queues on the border with Serbia was “expected” due to “the end of the holiday season, and the return of a large number of people who work in EU countries.”

“We said previously that checks on the EU’s external border would not change on 1 January, and they did not because the Croatian police have been implementing the Schengen code since before joining the Schengen Area,” he said.

“Let us take border police data for 24 December 2022, when we were still not part of the Schengen Area, and when the situation at Bajakovo was quite the opposite. People waited for up to five hours to enter Serbia because despite the large number of lanes for border control on the Croatian side, the infrastructure on the other side of the border is insufficient to deal with such a large number of passengers without them having to wait for some time,” Bozinovic said.

He added that “everyone traveling over the weekend could feel what Schengen means” – but on Croatia’s other border with Slovenia, where there are no longer any passport checks.