Bosnia is expecting an increase in arrivals of migrants who are moving along the so-called Balkan route toward EU countries and Security Minister Dragan Mektic on Friday said the country is considering whether to accept Hungary’s offer to send its police forces to help Bosnian border police.

Nearly 25,000 migrants from the Middle East, northern Africa and Asia have passed through Bosnia, trying to reach neighbouring EU-member Croatia and then travel to other European countries from there.

Mektic said that nearly 22,000 of them successfully managed to cross through Bosnia but that several thousand are still stuck in migrant centres across the country.

“We are expecting an escalation of the problem with the migrants, not only in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but along the entire route,” Mektic told AFP.

He said that various institutions, including those of the EU, predict that some 70,000 migrants who are currently in Greece are moving towards western Europe.

“This is not only a problem of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We want to be part of a European solution, but the EU cannot agree on one. These illegal migrations are simply permitted to continue,” he said.

Mektic said that Bosnia, as a poor and paralysed state with a fragmented government, does not have the economic or political capacity to handle such a huge influx of migrants.

The EU has last year given Bosnia nearly 9,2 million euros to help the country set up migrant centres to accommodate some 4,500 people.