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Zagreb - The Sabor's Home Affairs and National Security Committee on Thursday adopted a conclusion obliging the government to submit to the parliament within the next 15 days a report on the state of illegal migrations in Croatia since its Schengen entry, to be followed by a discussion on it at a plenary session.
This corrects the procedural mistake due to which, based on a previous conclusion by the Committee, the Ministry of the Interior's report on illegal migrations was not put on the agenda of the plenary session.
The issue of illegal migrations is one of the crucial issues and deserves to be discussed at a plenary session, said Committee chair Siniša Hajdaš Dončić (SDP).
Democracy is a set of rules and procedures and if there is a wish to include an item on the agenda of a plenary, one makes an effort to reach a compromise in line with the Rules of Procedure, he said.
Nikola Grmoja (Bridge) believes that the previous conclusion of the Committee that the parliament should discuss the ministry's report in a plenary was correct and that there is no need to adopt the same conclusion.
"The government is evidently in big trouble considering that the Croatian border is like Swiss cheese, and that Italy and Slovenia have suspended the Schengen (passport-free travel) regime because illegal migrants are arriving via Croatia," Grmoja said at the session.
He maintains Prime Minister Andrej Plenković does not want help from Frontex because it would make him look incompetent or the army at the border because that would make him lose "his civilised European image" before EU bureaucrats.
Committee vice-chair Mario Kapulica of the ruling HDZ party said the government does not want Frontex on the Croatian border but on the Bosnia and Herzegovina border, which, he said, was most problematic.
The Committee also unanimously adopted, at the HDZ's proposal, a conclusion calling on the Justice Ministry to provide it with data on the number of persons against whom proceedings have been launched for people smuggling, sanctions and the relevant case law.
"We have heard the Ministry of the Interior say that 6,000 human traffickers have been arrested, including 1,070 this year alone, and we do not know what the situation is like with them, how they are treated, whether they have been sanctioned, and whether among them there are repeat offenders," said Kapulica.