In the Slovenian border communities of Kocevje and Kostel in the south of the country and in the southern part of the coastal region of Primorska, the fence on the border with neighboring Croatia is currently being expanded, the daily newspaper „Delo“ reported. In the south along the border river Kolpa, where the Schengen border runs, new ten kilometers of the panel fence are to be erected.
The Slovenian Ministry of the Interior confirmed that this was the fence from an order from the previous year when Slovenia ordered a total of 40 kilometers of the panel fence. According to this contract, the work had already started in August 2019.
The fence will be purchased in stages and set up by the end of the year, according to APA’s request. The Ministry of the Interior in Ljubljana did not disclose exactly where the fence will be erected and how long the new sections will be, because this is confidential information.
„Provisional technical barriers“ during the refugee crisis
According to the Slovenian Ministry of the Interior, a fence with a total length of 196 kilometers has been erected on the 380 km mainland border between the two EU countries Slovenia and Croatia. The existing border fence consists of 116 kilometers of “Concertina” blade wire fence and 80 kilometers of panel fence.
In the wake of the refugee crisis, Slovenia had started at the end of 2015 to erect the “provisional technical barriers”, as the fence at the Schengen external border is called by the authorities, to prevent illegal border crossings. Slovenia is a Schengen member, but Croatia is not yet.
