Croatia cannot become a “migrant hotspot”, stressed the country’s Prime Minister, ZoranMilanovic, earlier today (18 September), while warning that migrants flooding into Croatia will be “moved on”. According to the PM, the country’s borders would not be shut completely, but it had reached its limit. His comments came as Croatia closed seven of its eight road crossings after the completion of the fence along the Hungarian border diverted the huge influx of migrants seeking onward passage towards northern Europe westwards toward Croatian border.
So far, more than 14,000, mostly desperate and exhausted, migrants have entered Croatia.
Europe’s failure to devise a unified solution to the migrant crisis is intensifying confusion and desperation all along the trail from southern and southeastern Mediterranean and northern Europe and breeding animosity among nations extending back to the Middle East.With the unceasing influx of people leaving Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries, the lack of governmental leadership has left thousands of individuals and families on their own and prepared to instantly respond to changing circumstances on the ground and conflicting messages. This was the case most recently yesterday (17 September) when crowds that had been trying to enter Hungary through Serbia were confronted with a newly erected fence along the country’s southern border and diverted to Croatia in search of a new route to Germany.
Despite the ongoing chaosall along the human river of people flowing from war and poverty, there were few signs that EU leaders, or its Member State governments, were any closer to enforcing any order or to at least harmonize their approaches and messages to the migrants. While Brussels has appeared rather clueless about how to deal with the crisis, Macedonian and Serbian officials, along with many aid organizations, were urging the crowds of migrants to avoid a hostile Hungary and head to the Croatian frontier instead. Hungary, which had declared a “state of crisis” along its Serbian border on Tuesday, announced two days later that it was expanding it to include Croatia’s.
