Forty-five Slovak Police Officers Leave for Slovenia and Macedonia

Bratislava/Ljubljana/Skopje, February 3 (TASR) – Slovakia is sending 20 police officers to Slovenia and 25 to Macedonia in order to assist in the protection of their borders during the migration crisis, Prime Minister Robert Fico and Interior Minister Robert Kalinak announced at a briefing on Wednesday.

Slovak police will assist their counterparts in two countries in protecting public order.

In 2015 Slovakia sent police officers to assist at Hungarian-Serbian and also at Slovenian-Croatian border. “After the good experience and extraordinary results that our police officers and soldiers accomplished in these missions, further requests came in. Predominantly it’s a repeat mission in Slovenia. Twenty police officers are going there today,” said Fico.

According to Fico, in the case of Macedonia it’s protection of borders of a country that is not a European Union member nor a Schengen area member. “It’s an unprecedented move, but our decision to deploy the first 25 police officers show that we stand by our plan that when Greece is unable to protect its border, we have to protect some other border in order to prevent the inflow of illegal migrants to the EU,” said Fico.

Fico said that some thousands of migrants are entering the EU through Greece. “If someone isn’t able to fulfil its obligations following from Schengen agreements, there has to come a decision that will represent a guarantee,” said Fico.

According to Kalinak, the police officers being despatched have experience with such work and are have standard police equipment and also tools used for border monitoring such as thermographic cameras.

“This will be a new mission, the conditions will be more difficult, maybe it will be one of the most difficult missions. But I believe that the police officers are prepared,” said Kalinak in reference to Macedonia.