The migrant crisis in Bosnia is a complex issue, “more complex in the way it is unfolding than in 2014 because then the borders were open,” Security Minister Dragan Mektic told media after a government meeting where the surge of migrants entering Bosnia was discussed.

“Back then, you accepted them at the border and saw them off as they were leaving,” Mektic said.  

“Now the borders are not open and we are speaking of illegal groups entering Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he said.  

The meeting was also attended by Chairman of Bosnia’s Council of Ministers, Denis Zvizdic, Economic Relations and Foreign Trade Minister Mirko Sarovic, the director of the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs, Slobodan Ujic and US Ambassador to Bosnia, Maureen Cormack.  

Bosnia’s institutions exchanged information on the migrant situation and analyzed the issues and necessary steps that need to be taken for the adoption of an integral document regarding activities to tackle the migrant situation.

Groups of migrants come from Turkey through Greece, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro and then arrive in Bosnia, Mektic explained.  

“The crisis is complicated as, within the groups of those people there are vulnerable persons, so you have to treat them differently,” he pointed out.  

He explained that the surge of migrants arriving in Bosnia since beginning of May came about because a lot of the migrants had remained stuck in neighboring Serbia, “some 10.000 of them”, and now that wave was set in motion, partly because of changes in Serbia’s asylum laws.  

The problem Bosnia is facing, he said, is that the migrants do not want to tread anywhere outside the migrant route.  

“We will find a way and we will not allow any tent camps that would put pressure on the state,” he said, adding that “this is an issue of the general approach of the European Union towards them”.  

“Should this kind of pressure continue and should the countries of the EU keep closing their borders, we will have to do the same. We have financial and all kinds of other problems in Bosnia,” Mektic said, adding that managing the crisis is a “very expensive job” and that the country will have to manage the process “in a way for Bosnia not to become the final destination” for the migrants.  

Minister of Human Rights and Refugees, Semiha Borovac, said that the relevant institutions decided to open the doors of a refugee centre in Salakovac to accommodate 296 refugees and migrants.