Migration management in the Balkans

Despite various reports of migration mismanagement and human rights abuses in Serbia, the European Commission at the end of June signed an agreement with Belgrade to strengthen cooperation on migration control

On 25 June, the European Union signed an operational cooperation agreement with Serbia to facilitate border management with the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex). A press release from the European Commission explains that “the agreement will allow Frontex to carry out joint operations and deploy the European Border and Coast Guard standing corps anywhere on the territory of Serbia, including its borders with neighbouring non-EU countries”.

The agreement builds upon the 2021 cooperation operation, through which 111 Frontex officers have been deployed near Serbia’s border with Hungary and Bulgaria. While the previous agreement only allowed for Frontex operations to occur along Serbia’s borders with EU member states (Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania), the strengthened partnership gives Frontex the ability to support Serbian border guards in patrolling borders with Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo, which Serbia does not recognized.

European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, confirmed this change, saying that “under command of Serbian authorities, always at the initiative of Serbian authorities, Frontex will now also be able to support Serbian border guards and law enforcement at the borders with Bosnia Herzegovina and North Macedonia”.

The Serbian Interior Minister, Ivica Dačić, who signed the agreement on behalf of Serbia, added that “every additional policeman from the EU who joins our border police will help in a comprehensive response to the challenges of the fight against irregular migration".

In order to put the cooperation agreement into practice , the deal must get approval from both the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, and must be ratified by the Serbian parliament.

The situation in Serbia

Serbia has served as a main country of transit along the Western Balkan route given its geographic position and the fact that it shares borders with several EU member states. However, over the past few years, tighter security measures, meant to divert and slow migrants, have caused migratory patterns to change. According to Frontex , “some of the pressure from the Serbian borders shifted to the EU’s borders with Bosnia and Herzegovina, which saw a roughly 80% increase in illegal border-crossings in the first eleven months of 2023 compared with the same period of 2022”.

According to the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees and Migration, in the first four months of this year the number of migrants in Serbia decreased by 73% compared to the same period last year. This shift coincides with a deteriorating migration management system in Serbia.

Out of the sixteen centres for migrant reception, five facilities, located at migration exit points near Hungary and Croatia, remain closed indefinitely. Additionally , due to overcrowding, evictions from centres have become common and at least one centre has stopped accepting asylum applications altogether. Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) claims these changes “constitute a distinct effort of the state to limit the movement of people to the territory below the capital whilst simultaneously obstructing the right to asylum.”

Serbian border guards, who are due to be strengthened through their cooperation with Frontex, have also been accused of violently pushing back migrants who attempt to enter Serbia, shown through a series of investigations conducted by BVMN.

In February, near Bulgaria, 40 to 50 people were pushed back to the border, while in May, one young Moroccan man described how Serbian officers beat a group of three young men, stole their phones, and forced them to leave Serbia. In North Macedonia, a video emerged of a group, stripped down and forced back across the border, while similar reports have come from Romania.

Additional operationa l border control bases have also been erected near the borders with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Hungary and North Macedonia . At the beginning of May, both German and Italian Frontex officers had been seen operating in northern Serbia.

Furthermore, a new report by the EUobserver has revealed that migrants on the route, due to over prescription, loneliness and lack of proper health facilities are at risk of becoming addicted to drugs meant to treat anxiety, epilepsy, and panic attacks. As told by an activist on the ground, even “if someone complains of a headache or insomnia, doctors immediately respond by giving them powerful antidepressants and anxiolytics”. Specifically in Serbia, the health services have been deemed inadequate due to overcrowding and the lack of both doctors and health services.

Externalisation of European border management

While Serbia is the most recent Balkan country to sign an agreement with Frontex as part of the Action Plan on Western Balkans, there has been a series of partnerships between the EU and non-EU countries to secure Europe’s external borders. In May 2024, after approval by the European Parliament, the Council of the EU adopted the Pact on Migration and Asylum, establishing new reforms in European migration management and the common asylum system. The Pact prioritises cooperation with both countries of origin and transit, with special attention on the Balkans, “in order to facilitate return operations to so-called ‘safe third countries’ and increase the externalisation of border controls outside of the EU”, as described by BVMN.

This special focus on the region is further reinforced through the EU Action Plan on the Western Balkans, which has a goal of supporting member states that face migratory pressure along the Balkan Route. The Action plan, as per the European Commission’s press release , aims to strengthen border management, provide swift asylum procedures , fight migrant smuggling and “strengthen the cooperation on migration and border management with partners in Western Balkans”.

Following these plans, the EU already reinforced its partnerships in the region, with Moldova (2022), North Macedonia (2023), Montenegro (2023) and Albania (2024) having formed border management cooperation agreements with Frontex. However, similar to the situation revealed in Serbia, investigations led by BIRN and Solomon have shown that Frontex officers have been aware, yet overlooked, pushbacks in Albania and Bulgaria respectively.

These cooperation agreements and increased security measures along the borders has caused the number of irregular crossing detections in the Western Balkans to fall by 71% in the first five months of 2024.

The Balkan Route

Despite this recent drop, the Balkan route has been one of the most popular, and dangerous paths toward Europe in recent decades. According to data from Frontex, there were nearly 100,000 irregular border crossings along the route in 2023 alone. While the exact number of deaths is hard to verify and extremely underestimated, the IOM Missing Migrants Project reports that 377 people have been recorded missing since 2014. At its peak in 2015, the route served as a path to Europe for 764,000 people, according to Frontex .

While the route continues to be used as an entry to Europe, recent partnerships, like the agreement with Serbia, reveal the EU’s attempts to influence and ultimately stop migration far away from the borders of member states.

This article was produced as part of “MigraVoice: Migrant Voices Matter in the European Media”, an editorial project supported by the European Union. The positions contained in this article are the expression of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the positions of the European Union.