Meanwhile, Hungary’s announcement that Budapest plans to eventually seal its border with Croatia in order to stop the migrant influx raised speculation people might take a new so-called southern route through Montenegro and Croatia.
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(Gyorgy Varga/MTI via AP).
Serbian government voted Friday evening at an extraordinary session to cancel the countermeasures against Croatia, and thus enabled Croatian trucks carrying goods to enter Serbia again.
Hungarian soldiers cross train track at a station in the village of Zakany, Hungary, Saturday, September 26, 2015. The fence was built along the c… Croatia then began to simply bus the migrants to Hungary. Most want t…
He said he will seek support for a border fence and once the other countries are prepared, Hungary will enforce rules which guarantee the ways of crossing the Croatian-Hungarian border “are in line with European Union law”.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said he would appeal to the EU’s top court rather than accept the “diktat” from Brussels. More than 60,000 migrants have crossed into Croatia from Serbia in the past week.
Croatia first welcomed the migrants on the assumption they would transit through Slovenia, into Austria and on to Germany.
Regional authorities in the Croatian town of Dubrovnik said they were preparing for arrivals from Montenegro and were ready to handle about 3,000 to 5,000 refugees daily.
“I won’t allow that they make fools out of us and that they are sending all [refugees] to Croatia”, Milanovic told reporters.
To protest Croatia’s decision to close the border to cargo, Serbia has banned imports from Croatia.
The chaos strained relations among most of the countries in the region, particularly Croatia and Serbia, old rivals who fought a war amid the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Surprisingly, Croatia closed its border, not for immigrants but for all trucks coming from the Serbian side towards European Union, which directly affected Serbian economy.
ZAGREB, Sept 25 Croatia may lift a blockade on its border with fellow ex-Yugoslav republic Serbia in the next 24 hours, Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said on Friday.
“I believe this is a great victory for all the citizens of Serbia”, said Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic.
“This was a lesson for the voters”, Vlajic said.
Orban, who was in Vienna for talks with Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, indicated that the situation in countries that are receiving the migrants is also under strain.
Yesterday, Hungarian police arrested a Syrian migrant “suspected of taking part in a riot on the border with Serbia, entering the country illegally and being a member of a group used as a front by Islamic extremists”.
At the press conference that followed the meeting, Viktor Orban said that relations between their countries were “better than they were at eight o’clock today“.
Johannes Hahn said in Belgrade on Friday that migrant readmission should not be discussed within Europe.
Orban got the message, toning down his often-nationalistic diatribes.
“It is clear that Orbán is being more conciliatory and moderate instead of sticking to the “Hungary does it alone” position”, Csaba Toth, director of the Republikon Institute thinktank in Budapest, told Yahoo News.
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The tit-for-tat actions underscore the pressure exerted by thousands of people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia who are transiting the Balkans in hopes of making their way to countries such as Germany and Austria.
