FM Kovač: Tighter controls on Macedonia-Greece border might be viable solution

(Hina) - Croatia supports the idea of stepping up controls on the Greece-Macedonia border if Greece is unable to control its border with Turkey, but that requires the consent of all EU member states

(Hina) - Croatia supports the idea of stepping up controls on the Greece-Macedonia border if Greece is unable to control its border with Turkey, but that requires the consent of all EU member states, Croatian Foreign and European Affairs Minister Miro Kovač said on Saturday.

"We will be in favour of stepping up controls on the border between Macedonia and Greece. Our prime minister has accepted the idea put forward by Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar and we need further cooperation in that regard," Kovač said after an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Amsterdam, which focused on the refugee crisis.

On Saturday the EU ministers were joined by their colleagues from countries aspiring to join the EU.

The present solution, in which Croatia remains a transit country for refugees, will function as long as large host countries, notably Germany, accept refugees, Kovač said. "We need a European approach, a European solution, and we in the European Union should think carefully how we will treat the migration phenomenon in the future, how many migrants the EU can take in and where they would be. What is important for Croatia is that it is a transit country and functioning as such. I already said yesterday that Croatia would not be a collection centre."

As for tightening controls on the Macedonian-Greek border, Kovač said that Croatia supported this idea, but noted that it required the consent of all the member states. "That must be a Europe-wide solution, we all must accept it, because it is not enough if only Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary want that.  All of us in the European Union should support that and only then will such a decision make sense. That can be an acceptable alternative if Greece is unable to control its borders."

Asked about the risk of refugees heading towards Albania, Montenegro and Croatia in efforts to reach northern Europe in the event that the Macedonia-Greece border was closed, Kovač said that such a scenario was unlikely. "For now we don't see that as a realistic scenario. Police cooperation is functioning well. If we were to protect the external borders now, which in this case would be the border between Macedonia and Greece, it would not be only Croatian police that would be guarding that border, but police from other European countries as well, which would be a viable approach in the long term," he said.

During the two-day informal meeting, Kovač had bilateral talks with his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dačić.

"Minister Dačić and I discussed relations between Croatia and Serbia and we agreed to work on improving them. It is important that these relations are good and that we continue to cooperate, particularly on the economic front, and to deal with problems from the past, the legacy of the war. We have the necessary mechanisms and we will certainly be very efficient and successful in that regard in the near future," Kovač said after his first meeting with the Serbian foreign minister since taking office.

"Today we met for the first time since his appointment. We did not speak long, but we agreed that we should work on strengthening our bilateral relations and clearly define what specifically could be done in our bilateral relations. We will certainly continue our contacts as soon as elections in Serbia are over," Dačić said.

Kovač also met with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Slovenia's Karl Erjavec.

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