The director of the Centre for Protection and Assistance to Asylum Seekers, Radoš Đurović, said that thousands of refugees have been abusing the visa-free agreement that their respective countries have with Serbia to come to our country, and then try to enter the EU through illegal means.
In a statement to Tanjug news agency, he said that it is difficult to assess how many migrants we are talking about, but that, according to the situation in other countries like Austria and Germany, thousands of people are involved and these numbers are constantly growing.
“We are talking about people who enter Serbia via the airport and continue to travel to Western Europe. The number of migrants in accommodation is increasing, and the capacities are overstretched in Western countries. Also, they will not be able to respond to the influx of refugees from Ukraine, if this issue is not resolved in due time”, said Đurović.
He adds that migrants usually come from India, Burundi, Tunisia and some other countries, and stay 30 days without a visa in Serbia.
What Serbia can do, Đurović points out, is to harmonize the visa policy, first of all in relation to the countries that most migrants come from and which are now a problem, and this can be done by introducing visas to countries that are considered problematic in terms of the migrant influx.
As far as the number of people passing through the Balkan route to the EU goes, Đurović says that it is increasing year-on-year and that the numbers are approaching those from 2016.
“We are still not in the 2015 scenario, but the number of migrants has doubled compared to last year,” Đurović concludes.
(Politika, 19.10.2022)