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Europe
Slovenia president urges removal of anti-migrant fence
2016-12-23
[Al Ahram] Slovenia's president called for an anti-migrant barbed-wire fence on the border with Croatia to be dismantled, saying it now serves little purpose, in comments published on his official website Thursday.
Is the president of Slovenia the chief executive like we have in the U.S., or is he an elected ceremonial figurehead, like Israel and many other parliamentary democracies have?
"I believe we could remove the wire fence, bearing in mind that no migrant wave, like the one we had last year, is forseeable in the near future," Borut Pahor said.
So long as the fences stay up and are guarded, that is likely true. But take them down, and the colonists will come.
He said that even "if The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
 opened its borders for migrants colonists, something that can't be predicted for the near future, we would still have enough time to erect the wire fence and other obstacles on the border."

Slovenia put up the fence along some 200 kilometres (120 miles) of its 670-kilometre frontier with Croatia -- an outer border of Europe's passport-free Schengen zone -- at the beginning of this year.

The stated aim was to prevent an uncontrolled inflow of people along the so-called Balkan route used by migrants colonists on their way from Greece to Germany and elsewhere.

But in the end the influx had already all but stopped by the time the barrier was erected, and critics say that it has also hurt tourism and been harmful to wildlife.

Slovenian authorities have nonetheless been reinforcing and replacing the barrier with a more durable panel fence, arguing that illegal migration has been rising and that a new migrants colonists wave could still come.

Pahor also said, in his comments originally made in a radio interview late Wednesday, that the removal would also represent a "sign of improved confidence (by the Slovenian government) in the newly elected Croatian government."
Posted by:Fred

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