Dense fog envelopes the slopes of Plješivica, the mountain that marks the border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, near Korenica, 150 km south of Zagreb. “In good weather, you can clearly see Bihać from here,” says standing on the ridge Mladen Matovinović, the head of the Croatian border police in the region.
At 1,650 meters above sea level, he observes a strip of Bosnian land which, over the past six years, has become a key crossroads on the “Balkan route”. Hundreds of people try to walk through Bihać every day to reach the European Union.
With the entry of Croatia into the Schengen area on 1is January 2023, the 1,300 km border separating the country from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro became new outer limits of the European area of free movement. To the east, this border is delimited by the rivers, the Danube, the Sava and the Una river. But here, along the 100 kilometers under Mladen Matovinović’s responsibility, only forests and mountains cover the expanse of the terrain.
Dozens of surveillance cameras
“This is the most difficult section to control and the one that has suffered the most migratory pressure in recent years”, explains the policeman. To ensure control of this territory, the Croatian government provided it with personnel and equipment, largely financed by the EU.
Dozens of thermal cameras are hidden among the trees, four large cameras capable of filming up to 20 km away have been installed on telephone repeaters, dozens of officers patrol the Plješivica with the help of canine units.
The police also cleared a strip of forest 15 km long to allow helicopters to land and cameras to record movements. “Our project is to clear an additional 25 km”, says Mladen Matovinović, welcoming that the Croatian police are “ready” to monitor the new Schengen border. What the humanitarian organizations deplore.
Accusations of human rights violations
The Center for Peace Studies (CMS) regrets that Zagreb is “rewarded” by integrating the space of free movement after years of « violations » at its external borders. “For six years, there has been a systematic violation of human rights, with violence and illegal refoulements by the Croatian police”, explains Antonia Pindulić, a lawyer at the CMS in Zagreb.
Amnesty International denounces cases of « torture » on the Croatian-Bosnian border. At the end of 2021, Croatia was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights following the case of Madina Hussiny, a 6-year-old girl hit by a train in 2017 after being turned away by Croatian police with her family .
For the authorities, the police act in accordance with the law. “There have been many accusations of inhuman behavior, but very little concrete evidence,” says Terezija Gras. The Secretary of State for the Interior remains convinced that the young former Yugoslav republic is a ” model “ in border control. Besides, she recalls, “Croatia has a tradition of protecting its external border throughout its history”.
From the XVe century and until the end of the XIXe century, a large part of the current Croatian territory was included in the war countrythe military border that separated the Habsburg Empire from the Ottoman Empire. “In the 1770s, an Austrian general had already proposed, after an inspection of the military border, to clear part of the forest in order to better control it, but at the time the idea had not been followed up”, reports Alexander Buczynski, researcher at the Institute of Croatian History. Some 150 years later, the area between the Plješivica and the Sava River is once again under surveillance and this time cleared.
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Croatia adopts the euro
1991. Croatia proclaimed its independence on June 25, at the start of the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
2009. NATO membership.
2013. Membership of the European Union.
2023. Integration into the Schengen area and adoption of the euro. Croatia and its 3.9 million inhabitants have adopted this 1is January the single currency, becoming on 20e Eurozone state. It abandons its currency, the kuna (HRK), in force since 1994 (1 € = 7.54 HRK).
There are still seven EU countries that do not have the euro as their currency. Denmark which negotiated an exemption; Bulgaria and Romania, which do not meet the criteria; Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary which have the obligation to join the euro zone but still prefer to remain outside.