Setting up an additional wired fence at quota 59 at the Macedonian-Greek border, for protection against migrants illegally crossing, apparently is the first phase of the implementation of the agreement between Macedonia and the European countries to help control the refugee crisis in the wake of the influx of people expected to arrive in the Spring.
The second phase, as announced, will be the establishment of registration centres. Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki at an informal meeting of foreign ministers, which was held this weekend in Amsterdam, said that Serbia, Croatia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic offered its assistance to Macedonia in the form of police officers, equipment and establishing registration centres.
“The most important thing is to have people and equipment to be able to control the border and enforce the registration at locations where you have people legally crossing the border”, said Poposki. According to him, it does not matter what this kind of assistance will be called.
The function of the registration centres, according to the information available so far, is identical to the “hot spots”. This concept was introduced by the European Commission (EC) in the middle of last year. They envisioned the registration of refugees by identifying and fingerprinting to be carried out in countries that are on the front lines of the migrant wave, countries like Greece and Italy, and in places where in needs to be clarifies whether the persons are in need of international protection and be allowed transit to EU countries where they wish to seek asylum.
“Hot spots” does not function in Greece, judging by the “yellow card” the country received from the EC and have a conditional three months to correct the situation on the ground.
