Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar has said he wants to control the refugee flow, but not close its borders as was the case in Hungary.
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“The government has prepared additional urgent measures to manage the migrants’ flow, including the necessary measures to safeguard the Schengen border”, the administration said in a statement issued late Monday.
Some 30,000 more are expected in Slovenia over the next few days.
Cerar said the government had opted for barriers after weighing up all aspects of such a move, including the symbolism of border barriers.
“We decided yesterday to start building over the following days on the Schengen (zone) border with Croatia a few temporary technical obstacles”, PM Miro Cerar told reporters in the capital Ljubljana.
Europe has been beset by a refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing their home countries to escape violence and poverty.
Cerar said that the measures come ahead of an expected spike in the number of migrants arriving in the coming days after a recent lull.
The “commitments from Brussels… are not being fulfilled”.
According to him, the danger facing Slovenia as winter comes is that a new surge in refugees could create a bottleneck, leaving thousands upon thousands stranded in the country, especially if Austria and Germany start to stringently limit the number of arrivals at its borders. “We want to ensure a controlled and secure flow of migrants and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe”. The exodus marks the largest mass migration since the end of World War II. The mass influx is due in large part to Hungary’s decision to seal its borders with Croatia and Serbia, essentially forcing travelers to head toward Slovenia instead.
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The gathering of more than 50 leaders from both the European Union and Africa in Malta on Wednesday and Thursday will see an overwhelmed Europe call on Africa to take back economic migrants.
