Twenty-one police officers from Estonia, Lithuania and Poland will take part in Slovenian police border patrols along Slovenia's Schengen area border with Croatia as of Monday, Slovenia's Interior Ministry said on Friday.

On Friday, five Estonian, six Lithuanian and 10 Polish police officers were greeted in the town of Novo Mesto, whose police department is in charge of that border sector, by Interior Minister Ales Hojs, and Police Director, Anton Olaj.

According to Slovenian police, these joint police patrols with foreign officers will guard the Schengen border in line with Slovenian law, on the basis of bilateral agreements on police cooperation Slovenia signed with other EU countries.

“It is not yet known,” Croatian state agency Hina said citing Slovenian media outlets, “whether Slovenia has concluded similar memoranda with any of its neighboring countries in the European Union and the Schengen Area,” as announced by Minister Hojs, who had launched the initiative.

Hojs had earlier called for this saying that with the arrival of warm weather and larger volume of cross-border traffic that comes with the easing of the Covid-19 pandemic illegal migration into Slovenia would intensify.