source: Vecer (vecer.mk) 

Skoplje, March 2 – Tensions on the southern border are rising hour by hour with the increasing  number of refugees who are housed in a camp in the border village of Idomeni and who for days have no basic living conditions. The border or checkpoint remains closed, and an additional seven hundred members of the army and police are deployed, who need to strengthen the existing units and to prevent any escalation of the situation and breaking up the protective fence if the situation from Monday is repeated.

Currently, there are over 10,000 refugees from Syria and Iraq, and many of them are there for more than five days. Supplying food and water is difficult as well as the provision of medical assistance. One of the key problems is the accommodation – hundreds, maybe thousands of refugees spend nights under the open sky. They do not hide their dissatisfaction and are not excluded from the fact that the situation could suddenly deteriorate and break out of unrest.

The situation on the northern border has not changed. Serb authorities do not give refugees entrance. In the refugee camp in Tabanovci, there remained about seven hundred refugees from Afghanistan, which practically no country wants to accept. At the same time in Skopje, during the Balkan route, President of the European Council (EC) Donald Tusk official visit to Macedonia who has a head to head meeting with President Ivan on the occasion of the refugee crisis. Tusk said he was in favor of the principle of open borders, but that it would be less likely, especially in the last ten days, when most member states decided to unilaterally solve the problem.

Thus, Austria introduced daily and monthly quotas and forced other countries on the Balkan route to close borders for illegal refugee entries. The number of shifts in one day has fallen sharply, and at this point all countries are trying to get rid of about three thousand refugees from Afghanistan, who suddenly and without any explanation have become undesirable in the EU.

Germany, however, who tried to manage the crisis and find a solution acceptable to all countries involved in the crisis, slowly but surely distances itself and focuses on its own problems. An agreement with Morocco on the readmission of refugees was signed for which it was determined that they were pretending to be fake citizens of Syria. There are about ten thousand people, and maybe similar agreements will be reached with Algeria and Tunisia. In this way, Germany began negotiating independently, and not on behalf of the EU, and decisions on the deportation of refugees and migrants from its territory, and not, for example, from the territory of Greece, which the most affected by the crisis and faced with a serious problem. This move will also be contrary to all the statements made by Chancellor Merkel, who has repeatedly condemned unilateral solutions to the crisis.

Turkey, meanwhile, continues its strategy and plan. Common help of three billion euros for about two and a half million refugees who are on its territory are not paid. Therefore, Turkey still does not allow NATO ships to patrol the demilitarized zone in the waters of the Aegean Sea and at the border with Greece. When the plane of the German Defense Minister had to change the route due to the flight ban in the Turkish airspace, Vice Admiral Klein, the commander of the NATO fleet in the region, was also invited to Ankara to determine the areas in which ships could fly and patrol.

There is a problem with the Greek, where, if the borders are closed by the end of the month, more than one hundred thousand refugees and migrants will be captured. The Greek authorities are persistently pushing refugees and migrants to the border with our country and trying to set the conditions. So far, Greece has approved more than five hundred million euros for the management of the refugee crisis and the construction of registration and acceptance centers, which the local authorities have persistently delayed.

(O.CH.)