Border between Slovenia and Croatia © NGCHIYUI/Shutterstock
The Schengen free movement system is increasingly being put into crisis by suspensions applied by some member states, calling into question the need to combat migration, often without corroborating the numbers. The situation in Croatia and Slovenia
(Originally published on the portal Novosti October 28, 2023)
The jewel in the crown of European integration, as Brussels bureaucrats once called the Schengen system, has been seriously jeopardized by the decision of eleven EU member states to temporarily suspend the free movement regime. From the center of the Union (Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden) to the periphery, i.e. the border between Slovenia and Croatia, passing through Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy and Austria, we have witnessed the restoration of border controls. A measure that did not come as a surprise to those, especially scholars of the migration phenomenon and migrants themselves, who have crossed one of the above countries on board a bus or train in recent months.
Among those who were not surprised was Marijana Hameršak, researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies in Zagreb, responsible for the project MY HUSBAND which investigates the mechanisms for managing migratory flows at the peripheries of the EU.
Hameršak explains that for years now in the EU the Schengen system and the migration issue have been exploited from a strategic perspective, as a foreign policy tool, but also as a means of polarizing the electorate and, ultimately, as an expedient to normalize the idea – which however has no basis in reality, nor is it supported by research – according to which migration represents a problem.
“The increase in numbers, which we talk about trying to explain Slovenia’s decision to introduce controls on the border with Croatia, is a relative variation, partly a consequence of the application of different administrative systems and tactics. In any case, it is not a recent increase – the numbers began to grow in the spring of 2022, if not even earlier – just as the introduction of controls, no matter how hard we try to present it from an emergency perspective, is not a unexpected measure”, underlines Hameršak.
If some member states, such as Austria, have continued to carry out border controls almost uninterruptedly since the 2015 migration wave, other countries have only deployed so-called mobile border patrols in recent months, justifying this decision with a possible repetition of the crisis, thus fueling a feeling of paranoia among the population.
According to an analysis published on the portal Euractive at the end of September, a quarter of Schengen area countries deployed mobile patrols along their borders even before the official suspension of the free movement regime, thus making life more difficult for many EU citizens, but also for refugees and other people on the move crossing Schengen countries.
Uršula Lipovec Čebron, associate professor at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Faculty of Philosophy in Ljubljana and collaborator on the ERIM project, takes stock of the situation on the Slovenian-Croatian border.
“Even before the Schengen suspension, the Slovenian police carried out daily checks on trains and buses, resorting to racial profiling. Then, he systematically stopped migrants, recorded their personal data and then made them get off the means of transport. In recent months, traveling by train from Zagreb to Ljubljana, I have often witnessed similar scenes at Dobova and other border crossings,” explains Uršula Lipovec Čebron.
For Professor Lipovec Čebron, the suspension of Schengen on the one hand legitimized an already existing practice, on the other it led to a spectacularization of the work of the border police.
Marijana Hameršak is also of the same opinion. According to his words, it was precisely the practices employed by the border police that pushed many people, even after Croatia’s entry into the Schengen area, to cross the Croatian-Slovenian border at night, outside the official border crossings, even trying to get over the barbed wire.
“Now that systematic checks have been introduced, including closing passages in the border fence, those routes are again becoming the only option,” says Marijana Hameršak.
If Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and Interior Minister Davor Božinović tried to present Slovenia’s suspension of free movement as a decision linked exclusively to terrorist attacks on European soil, Slovenian Interior Minister Boštjan Poklukar has repeatedly criticized the Croatian authorities due to the increase in the number of migrants arriving in Slovenia from Croatia. Ljubljana has also offered help to Zagreb, repeatedly proposing to form mixed patrols along the border, but Croatia has always refused to cooperate.
In the meantime, the procedures applied towards migrants intercepted on Croatian territory have changed. In the spring of 2022, Croatian police began issuing migrants with deportation orders, ordering them to leave Croatia and the European Economic Area within seven days. But then from March this year the attitude of the police changed: many people were caught while trying to enter Croatia, but also those who were staying illegally in the country were registered as asylum seekers, and were then urged to continue their journey. towards the west.
Marijana Hameršak explains that the documents issued to migrants during that procedure practically mean a temporary regularization of their status, that is, a recognition of people in transit seeking international protection.
“We do not yet know what the consequences of this practice may be, nor do we know whether the people concerned risk being more exposed to imprisonment and deportation in other EU member states. It is clear, however, that we need to find the political strength to pursue a path aimed at decriminalizing transit and migratory flows in general, taking into account the needs of individuals. It is not an impossible path, there are several historical precedents. I can mention the so-called Nansen passport, which takes its name from the first commissioner for refugees of the League of Nations, which in the period between the two world wars had allowed hundreds of thousands of displaced people to reach places where – for economic reasons, family ties or other factors – they wanted to try to start a new life,” explains the researcher.
According to official statistics, in Croatia in the first six months of 2023 over 24 thousand people requested asylum, a figure far higher than in previous years. However, violent expulsions continue: in the first nine months of this year, around two thousand rejections were recorded. On the initiative website No Name Kitchen details have been reported of a recent case in which ten Afghan citizens and two Indians were thrown into cold water after being stripped of their property and intimidated with gunfire, beatings and other forms of physical abuse by of the Croatian police. According to the victims’ testimonies, the episode occurred at the beginning of October near Bihać, on the border between Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina.
Meanwhile, in view of the European and national elections, many political leaders, as well as opposition forces, continue to fuel an emergency climate, talking about the collapse of Schengen and stubbornly pushing for the adoption of the new pact on migration and asylum where they see the only solution. The proposed pact – which, given the current situation, could be approved sooner than expected – represents a step backwards in the protection of the rights of migrants and refugees.
If the text were to be approved in its current version, access to asylum in Europe would become even more difficult, attempts would be made to keep migrants as far away from the EU as possible and many of those already present on European soil would be repatriated. In the long term, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina would most likely be transformed into the so-called “buffer zone”, but also into a sort of dumping ground where to confine the “unwanted”. And for this reason it was quickly decided to build an identification center in Dugi Dol, near Krnjak, Croatia.
Marijana Hameršak points out that the suspension of Schengen and the accompanying discourse will contribute to further stigmatization of migrants, the normalization of racial profiling practices and the polarization of society – dynamics that have lately become very evident on both sides of the Croatian border -Slovenian. If in Croatia the right-wing opposition calls for the army to be sent to the border and a referendum on immigration, in Slovenia they want to overturn the decision to remove the barbed wire along the border, one of the main electoral promises of the current Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob.
“For some time now in Slovenia there has been an attempt to politically exploit migration, with the aim of dividing the population which usually has little contact with refugees and is therefore unable to acquire adequate awareness of the migratory phenomenon through its own experience. It is easy to instill fear by spreading untrue information, so much so that many citizens continue to see nothing problematic about the border fence. However, there are also those who publicly protest against the closure of border crossings and other measures that make it more difficult and put the lives of migrants at risk, but they will never be able to stop them in their attempt to find a way to reach the European Union” , concludes Professor Lipovec Čebron.
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