EU Focus: New Union Border Benefits Balkan Citizens

Monday, 21 February, 2005

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Neil Barnett

Thirteen years ago, the Obrezje border crossing between Slovenia and Croatia was a leafy, single-track country lane that linked two republics inside the federal republic of Yugoslavia.

There was no border post then, or even a sign. That all changed on June 25, 1991, when Slovenia declared its independence. A humble portakabin immediately appeared on what was now an international frontier and since then both the road and the border crossing have steadily expanded.

Today the multi-lane border post with its overarching gantry looks like any state frontier.

In a few week’s time on May 1, it will also mark the external frontier of the European Union.

To the south lie the former Yugoslav republics of the western Balkans, which missed the train to Brussels owing to their independence wars with the Serb-controlled Yugoslav army in the 1990s. To the north lies peaceful Slovenia, which will now be locked into the EU family.

As if to emphasise the union’s geographical shift, Italy and Slovenia are taking down all the remaining physical barriers between the two countries, which already seem like relics of the Cold War.

Some observers have compared the south-eastward advance of the EU’s border to the drawing of a new Iron Curtain. It was Winston Churchill, speaking at Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, who spoke of a “curtain” descending between the communist east and the democratic west, running from Trieste in the Adriatic to Stettin in the Baltic.

The new curtain, such as it is, runs along the north-east corner of the Adriatic, looping eastward along the southern frontiers of Slovenia and Hungary.

In reality, little will change on this external border for some time. Nor will Slovenia immediately join the Schengen zone of EU states, which have abolished frontier checks with each other.

Dusan Burian, senior inspector in charge of international cooperation for the border department of the Slovene police, told IWPR, “We will probably not join the Schengen zone until 2007. Until then our borders with Italy and Austria will still be formally controlled.”

If the EU is satisfied with Slovenia’s control of its 670 km-long border with Croatia, it will gain access in 2007 to the Schengen Information System database. Travellers entering the zone through Slovenia will then be free to roam the zone untroubled by borders.

After May 1, as today, Croatian citizens will not need a visa to enter the EU. Serbian citizens will, however. Unsurprisingly, the Croats among the 10 million people who cross the border at Obrezje each year annually are little concerned by the changes.

“Nothing will become any worse for us,” said Zoran, a Croat businessman from Zagreb, driving a new BMW. “With Slovenia in the EU we have a chance to expand our building materials business. It’s an opportunity.”

The border already appears well managed and well equipped, boasting automatic passport readers, forgery detectors, endoscopes, Geiger counters and all the standard frontier gadgets.

But traffickers in people and narcotics will still try to find their ways in. Senior inspector Robert Kobe, who runs the Obrezje crossing, says people smugglers have already tried their luck.

“Two or three years ago large numbers of illegal immigrants were trying to cross at Obrezje in lorries. Now they know we will probably catch them as they go over the ‘green borders’,” he said, referring to often unmarked rural border crossings where small parties of immigrants and smugglers can cross at night undetected.

As yet, the Slovene police have not made extensive use of ground-motion sensors and other high-tech equipment on the “green borders”, through they try to patrol them and are about to acquire a helicopter equipped for night surveillance.

Drugs smuggling, which is easier to conceal than the human cargo, is harder to check. Slovenian police seized 90 kg of heroin last year, well up on the 68 kg haul the previous year.

The country lies along a Balkan transit route for drugs that runs all the way to western Europe. A senior detective in Ljubljana says the traffic is not all one-way. Chemicals used for the production of drugs also pass from the EU through Slovenia to the Balkans and Turkey. “A few years ago we captured 20 tonnes of acetic anhydride in one consignment,” the detective said, “that’s enough to make eight tonnes of pure heroin from opium base”.

Hungary’s border guards will also have to control a long stretch of the EU’s external frontier. The country adjoins Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Ukraine. The border with the former Soviet Union is seen as presenting greater potential problems than that with former Yugoslavia.

In February, a Ukrainian national was held on the frontier after police found 400 grammes of uranium in his vehicle which the suspect claimed was to be used by a dentist.

Colonel Sandor Orodan, of the Hungarian Border Guard, believes EU accession will pose new challenges for the frontier police, as Hungary becomes “not only a transit country but a destination country in the schemes of international human smuggling organisations”.

Human traffickers often favour Hungary as they attempt to move their women victims from Moldova, Ukraine and Romania to destinations inside the EU.

According to Colonel Orodan, the number of attempts to smuggle people across “green borders” is decreasing.

The reason for this is that international human smuggling organisations have become so sophisticated - using new methods, such as document forgery - that they can pass frontier crossings undetected.

For now, media rhetoric about a new Iron Curtain appears misplaced. If a new curtain is falling across Europe, it is falling in a benign way. Those wishing to enter the EU illegally or to engage in smuggling may find life marginally harder. The law-abiding majority stands to benefit.

For most travellers, the frontier will be just as permeable or as impermeable as it was before EU enlargement. Moreover, the curtain is not static: it should keep moving south and east for some time yet.

Neil Barnett is an independent correspondent based in the Balkans (www.neil-barnett.com)