MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The Commission said in a Friday statement that "President Juncker affirmed his personal support and offered EU technical and logistical assistance to Prime Minister Milanović to cope with the current situation."
According to the statement, EU interior ministers will meet next Tuesday to discuss joint European measures to tackle the migrant inflow from crisis-torn countries in the Middle East and Africa. Croatia has been particularly struggling with the migrant inflow after Hungary closed its borders forcing the migrants to use alternative routes to get to wealthier EU countries.
Both Juncker and Milanovic "stressed the need to enhance the protection of the EU's external border, to step up EU assistance in our immediate neighbourhood and to make swift progress on operational solidarity between the EU Member States to cope with the refugee crisis, on the basis of the initiatives and proposals made by the Commission last week," the statement said.
The European Commission president and the Croatian prime minister agreed to continue their discussions on the issue of refugees on the sidelines of the informal European summit, which will take place in Brussels on September 23, according to the statement.
On Friday, Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said that his country was no longer capable of registering and housing all the refugees arriving there, and therefore had decided to start sending them to its external borders by bus.
More than 14,000 migrants have arrived in Croatia in just two days, Milanovic declared on Friday, making note of the scale of the problem in relation to Croatia's population of just 4.2 million.
Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Friday that Croatia’s decision to transport migrants to external borders, particularly to its Hungarian border, amid the influx is unacceptable.
