Bosnia’s Security Minister Dragan Mektic attended the meeting of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (FBiH) Association of Towns and Municipalities organized amid the huge influx of migrants in Bosnia. Mektic stressed Bosnia will not become a migrant and refugee reception centre.

“We neither have the intention nor the capacity to become a migrant reception centre outside the EU and I’ve said this in Brussels,” Mektic said.

He reiterated that this also represents a security challenge for Bosnia.

“These migrations are a security challenge. When a country has a security challenge, it instantly reflects on its citizens and their property. This crisis is not just a Bosnian problem. it’s been going on since 2015 but it never escalated in this way before. This has become a big problem for the EU,” Mektic concluded.

He added that the problem can only be resolved in cooperation with other Western Balkans countries and the EU member states, stressing that the source of the problem is Greece and Bulgaria.

Considering the situation in the country, Bosnian authorities have focused on the issue in 2 ways:

“One of the ways is to protect our borders and strengthen our border-protection capacities. We’re redirecting police officers from the state and entity levels to border protection,” Mektic said. “The other way in which we’re focusing on the migrant issue is through humanitarian action. We also plan to establish two reception centres very quickly. One in the vicinity of Sarajevo (central Bosnia) and the other in the Una-Sana Canton (USC), northern Bosnia.”

He agreed with the local authorities that the migrants and refugees from the USC be accommodated in the ‘Agrokomerc’ company facility, which was one of the biggest food companies in Velika Kladusa (USC) before the war in Bosnia (1992-1995).

The meeting participants also agreed they would not allow the migrants and refugees from the USC to reside in parks and towns and to disturb the residents, but that they will have to reside in reception centres.