Serbia Urges EU to Develop Unified Policy on Migrant Crisis

The Serbian PM called on the EU to elaborate a common approach to tackling the refugee crisis.

BELGRADE (Sputnik) — Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic on Friday formally requested the European Union to develop a common policy to deal with the ongoing migrant crisis.

"When someone says that they will not take in members of this or that nation, it needs to be agreed at EU level or, at least, we need to be informed of that timely so that we can react," Vucic said at the meeting with EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides, to whom he conveyed the request.

In recent months, Europe has faced an enormous influx of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. Many refugees use transit routes through the Balkans, specifically through Serbia, to reach more prosperous countries in Western Europe.

Amid the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe, Hungary, used by hundreds of thousands of migrants as a gateway to wealthier EU member states, built a fence on its border with Serbia, and reinstated border control measures

In November, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia announced their decisions to shut their doors to economic migrants allowing entry only to refugees from crisis-hit countries. The following month, Austria began building a fence along its border with Slovenia to better control the inflow of migrants.