Following a ‘significant deterioration of security in the Middle East’, terrorist threats, and violent conflicts across Africa, Slovenia has decided to extend police checks at its border with Croatia and Hungary until 22 June 2024.
The country first introduced temporary checks on 21 October under Article 28 of the Schengen Borders Code, which can be done for a maximum of two months.
Now, it has invoked Article 25 of the code, which allows police checks for six months. The authorities will keep an eye on the situation until then. Any subsequent extension will be based on how the security situation evolves in Slovenia and the broader region.
The government said that the level of terrorist risk remained elevated in Slovenia and elsewhere in Europe, whereby a threat to one Schengen zone member constitutes a threat to all members. Law enforcement in several countries have arrested several third-country nationals in anti-terrorist raids, while migration flows represent “a security risk in this context,” it said.
Slovenia does not check all passengers at present, and the same system will remain in place, with targeted checks “focused on the prevention of terrorism, extremism and cross-border crime.”
There has been concern in Croatia that the checks could cause massive delays on the border as hundreds of thousands of expats from around the Balkans travel home for the holiday and then back, but Slovenia and Croatia have agreed that the checks will be “flexible” during the holidays to prevent long waiting times.
“We agreed that the regime will be maximally flexible during the Christmas and New Year holidays so that we avoid crowds at border crossings. We expect a huge inflow of our people who live and work in Western Europe and those who will cross Croatia,” Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said after discussing the issue with Slovenia’s Robert Golob on the margins of the EU summit last Friday.
(Sebastijan R. Maček | sta.si)
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