On the 20th of February 2017, Hungarian Minister of Interior Sándor Pintér met with his Croatian counterpart Vlaho Orepic in Budapest to discuss measures to enhance security of border controls. A recently adopted EU legislation requires that all citizens be subject to checks at border crossing points regardless of whether they are entering or exiting the territory of the European Union. Sándor Pintér stressed that the so-called systematic checks should be carried out in such a way as to increase security without putting extra burden on the residents of the two countries. Vlaho Orepic considered the introduction of the systematic checks to be a reasonable security measure.
In case systematic checks slow land border traffic too much, Member States may carry out only targeted checks, provided that a risk assessment has shown that this would not pose security threat. The agreement reached by the ministers mandates the Hungarian and Croatian officials in charge of border controls to cooperate on “preventing such unexpected events”
During the talks the parties also discussed the European migration agenda and current trends in migration. Vlaho Orepic thanked his Hungarian colleague for supporting Croatian ambitions to attain full Schengen membership.
