Croatia is the first EU member state at the northwestern end of the Balkan Route. Migrants who want to travel to Western and Northern Europe from Bulgaria, Greece and Croatia’s neighboring states Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia must also pass through Croatia, a country that has become a member of the Schengen Area. in January 2023.

“In the first ten months of 2024, a total of 26,534 irregular border crossings were recorded”, the Croatian Ministry of the Interior tells DW. Most of the immigrants are citizens of Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, Russia and Egypt.

In contrast to the images one sees on the streets of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Austria and northern Italy, in Croatia one does not often encounter refugees from war zones or countries in deep crisis, such as Syria and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, as several photos that have been circulated of the structures in the mountains of the border with Italy and Austria testify, there are many refugees who either cross or even stay for a while in Croatia.

“Climbers often find clothes, shoes, backpacks, documents, photos, eyeglasses, children’s toys and diapers in the mountains – and all this is not trash, but traces of the brutality of the Croatian border regime,” the NGO explains to DW ” Gradovi utocista” (“Cities of Refuge”), an organization that coordinates local actions and activists in Croatia to help migrants in the country.

How immigrants are perceived by the local population and how much contact they have with locals is inversely proportional to how harshly the law treats them, making them illegal and criminally liable. As Izvor Rukavina, Gradovi utocista activist and sociologist at the University of Zagreb, emphasizes, “in Italy and Bosnia, migrants can appear in public more easily, without risking the continuation of their journey. In Croatia and Slovenia, on the contrary, the risk of their arrest and pushback is much greater, especially if they happen to give an interview to a media outlet.”

A treaty of the last two years?

In the past, however, things were different. Until Croatia joined the Schengen Area, the authorities gave refugees so-called “seven-day documents”, with which they could cross the country within a week. The specific documents and the personal information referred to in them formed the basis for future possible push-backs and readmissions of migrants from other EU countries.

“At that time, for example, a humanitarian aid point was set up in Rijeka, where more than a hundred people were given food and refreshments every day, before they continued their journey,” says Rukavina. At the beginning of 2024, however, the project stopped, as refugees were no longer coming to the city. And this despite the fact that “too many immigrants are still passing through Croatia. Hence today we speak of “invisible migration”.

Between repulsion and drowning

Croatian media reports on refugees now concern the arrests of traffickers following police checks or accidents in which migrants were injured and thus identified by the authorities. However, these reports do not come from the borders, but from the roads that connect EU states such as Italy, Slovenia and Austria with the border regions of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia.

From there, for years, there have been reports of barbaric – and illegal under EU law – pushbacks on Croatia’s border with Bosnia-Herzegovina. Among other things, Croatian border guards even use drones to track refugees trying to cross the EU’s external borders. People used to have to cross Bosnia-Herzegovina, where there were still mines from the 1992-1995 war. And landmines are just one of the dangers migrants face. Activist organizations such as SOS Balkanroute report that more and more bodies are being pulled from the rivers of Bosnia and Serbia’s border with Croatia.

96.4% continue to other countries

“Only 3.6% of those who have indicated that they intend to apply for international protection in Croatia finally decide to submit an official application,” the Croatian Ministry of the Interior points out to DW. “We have no information to which country these people were headed.” There are currently 1,012 people in the country who have been recognized as refugees – among them are three Palestinians and 23 Russian nationals.

Temporary protection is also enjoyed by around 25,000 Ukrainian refugees, who according to the Ministry have the right to “hospitality in refugee reception centers, provision of food and clothing, reimbursement of expenses for the use of public transport […] and financial support amounting to 20 euros per month”.

Germany wants to return 16,000 migrants to Croatia

In the future the number of people in need of such support may increase significantly. At the end of November, the Croatian editorial of DW reported that Germany wants to send 16,000 migrants back to Croatia.

Such efforts to readmit migrants within the EU are provided for in EU law: according to the Dublin III Regulation, the EU Member State that first received the person – i.e. the EU state where their details were first registered – is responsible for an asylum seeker time.

In 2023 Germany wanted to send back to other EU states 74,622 asylum seekers – most of them to Italy (15,749) and Croatia (16,704), with Croatian authorities more cooperative than Italian ones.

According to Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic, in 2024 Germany announced the return of 1,519 migrants to the country, of which only 401 actually took place. “We have reached an agreement with the German side to return 182 more people by the end of year”, Bozinovic had also stated at a press conference in Zagreb last November.

Edited by: Giorgos Passas