News of thousands of refugees,
\nmostly Syrian, transiting every day countries such as Macedonia and Serbia on
\ntheir way to Western Europe make all the headlines these days and stay high on
\nthe European political agenda. Alongside Greece, Italy is one of the countries
\nmost exposed to the massive flow of immigrants, with over 104,000 people from
\nAfrica, the Middle East and South Asia reaching the Italian ports this year
\nalone. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After having tolerated for weeks the massive flows of such immigrants
\ncoming through Greece, last week the Skopje government accused the Greek
\nauthorities of deliberately guiding the immigrants towards Macedonia.
\nTherefore, they declared a state of emergency and deployed police and army
\nforces to the area, to put a stop to that massive inflow. Crossing the border
\nwas banned last Thursday for 24 hours, but later the immigrants were again
\nallowed to pass. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So far avoided by the waves of immigrants, Romania has decided
\nto take some measures anyway. The more so as neighbouring Hungary is about to
\nbuild a 4 metre high and 175 metre long fence on its border with Serbia, to
\nprevent the immigrants from entering its territory. Following Thursday’s
\nmeeting of the National Committee for Special Emergency Situations, the
\nsecurity vice-premier, Gabriel Oprea, announced that Romania would tighten
\nsecurity on the border with Serbia. He explained that, although Europe was
\nfaced with an unprecedented migration crisis, which raised pressure in the
\nsouthern and south-eastern parts of the EU, in Romania, the attempts to
\nfraudulently cross the border and the number of asylum applications were still
\nlow, within last year’s parameters. However, some measures will be taken,
\nfocusing mainly on monitoring the situation in the region. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Gabriel Oprea: We intend to intensify
\ncooperation between the national authorities, in order to ensure safety and
\nsecurity on the national borders, to increase the operational capacity on the
\nborder with Serbia, and to boost the operational capacity in the areas at risk,
\nby means of fixed and mobile equipment, used both during the day and at night.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Gabriel Oprea also said that
\nBucharest was considering the development of an infrastructure that would
\nenhance the accommodation capacity for immigrants, although Romania already has
\nsix regional accommodation centers, with a total capacity of some 1,500 places,
\nwhich are only 20% occupied at the moment. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Romania has not yet been affected by the waves of refugees that have been crossing the neighboring countries trying to reach Western Europe. Bucharest officials, however, have decided to take some precautionary measures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":64959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[29404,29819,35417],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-64958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-gabriel-oprea","tag-immigration","tag-measures"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n