OBREZJE, Slovenia (Reuters) – Slovenia on Saturday deployed police on border crossings with Croatia and Hungary to prevent potential security threats, leading to queues as travellers waited to have their documents checked.
The Slovenian government had on Friday decided to introduce temporary border controls until Oct. 30, following its neighbour Italy which introduced controls on its border crossing with Slovenia to improve home security.
Police were deployed on 14 border crossings with Croatia and Hungary, Slovenian news agency STA reported. The remaining 18 crossings will not have a permanent police presence.
Travellers queued to have their papers checked at the Obrezje crossing on the border with Croatia, where checks had not taken place since Jan. 1 this year when Croatia joined the control-free Schengen Area.
Katica Fjacko, who was travelling from the Croatian capital Zagreb, said she had left earlier to make the journey because of the controls. “Now this is a bigger chaos, people are worried”, she said.
Explaining its decision to introduce border controls, the government cited security threats that may come from what it said were “members of various terrorist and extremist movements and groups” moving from areas of armed conflict and aiming to reach Europe.
It also cited a rise of organised crime in the western Balkans.
(Reporting by Antonio Bronic; Writing by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by David Holmes)
