(Photo: HRT) (Photo: HRT)

A very small number of migrants will manage to reach Europe, and tensions caused by this matter will decrease in the coming days, Croatian President Zoran Milanović said after meeting with his Austrian counterpart Alexander Van der Bellen in Vienna on Monday.

Politics Nikola BadovinacMarch 2, 2020, 4:55 p.m.
Nikola Badovinac

Milanović, who was the prime minister of Croatia during the 2015 migration crisis when over a million refugees arrived in Europe, said the EU was stronger and better prepared to mitigate a similar crisis. He added that a crisis on that scale was physically impossible and predicted that tensions would calm down within a few days.

Austria is taking a tough stance after Turkey reopened its borders to illegal migrants making their way towards the European Union. Austria's conservative Interior Minister Karl Nehammer vowed on Sunday to stop any migrants attempting to rush its border if measures to halt them in Greece and through the Balkans fail.

For his part, Van der Bellen said that the border countries such as Greece and Bulgaria should not be left in the lurch in that regard, adding that he did not know what Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan actually wanted to achieve by opening the border to Europe for migrants.

Erdogan said in Ankara on Monday that European leaders were now calling him to discuss closing the border, but that it was too late for that now and that the path to Europe would remain open.

"There will be talks with Turkey to see what they actually want," the Austrian president said, adding that Europe would continue to face the problem of illegal migration as long as the situation in Syria does not change.

Croatia is taking a leading role in the crisis, as the country currently holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Source: HINA

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