Countries brace for new turn in Balkan migration route

Several states are urgently reviewing border security in case the European Union and Turkey fail to dramatically cut the number of people crossing the Mediterranean and migrants find alternatives to the now closed "Balkan route" into Europe.

About 45,000 migrants are now stuck in Greece after countries to the north – Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia – this month shut down a route that more than one million people took over the past year to Austria, Germany and beyond.

Some 14,000 people are languishing in a squalid camp at Idomeni in northern Greece. From here scores pay hundreds of euro to people smugglers every night to lead them through the razor-wire border fence into Macedonia.

The desperation of the asylum seekers is clear. Last Monday, more than 1,000 were returned to Greece after trekking for many kilometres through woods and fording a swollen stream to enter Macedonia.

Earlier that day, two men and a woman drowned trying to cross a river into Macedonia; last Saturday, Serbian customs guards found 33 people, including Syrians and Afghans, hiding in a cargo wagon of a train coming from Macedonia.

West to Albania

Smugglers around Idomeni now offer to take migrants into

Albania

– 180km to the west – rather than north into the fenced-off and heavily guarded Macedonia.

The walking route from Greece to Albania follows rough terrain, but it is passable and, for now, relatively lightly patrolled.

Once in Albania, migrants could turn north and cross Kosovo to Serbia; stay closer to the coast and trek through Montenegro to Croatia; or undertake the 80km crossing of the Adriatic to Italy.

When Albania descended into chaos in the 1990s, tens of thousands of people fled by sea to Italy, and criminal groups have long delivered guns, drugs and contraband cigarettes from Albania to tiny beaches and coves in the Puglia region.

"Albania has sought Italy's help to strengthen its border controls and cope with the various security problems should there be a flow of migrants heading towards the . . . frontier," Albania's interior minister. Saimir Tahiri. said this week.

"It is possible that that route could be opened," said Mr Tahiri's Italian counterpart, Angelino Alfano. He said Italy would help Albania "do all that is possible on prevention of terrorism and illegal immigration".

Macedonia and Bulgaria are launching joint air and land operations at their shared frontier, and last weekend Bulgarian premier Boiko Borisov oversaw police and military exercises on his country's border with Greece.

Bulgarian fence

Bulgaria has built a fence along part of its border with Turkey. Last year some 30,000 migrants are believed to have crossed that way before trekking into Serbia.

Romanian president Klaus Iohannis met top security officials this week and discussed how to respond if migrants began crossing the country, possibly to circumvent fences that Hungary built along its borders with Serbia and Croatia.

Hungary’s government has now ordered work to be done on the Romanian frontier, so that a fence could be erected there within 10 days.