STA, 23 June 2019 - Slovenia and Italy will launch joint mixed border patrols on 1 July, Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said on Saturday, according to news reports. Slovenia's Foreign Ministry told Radio Slovenia on Sunday that an implementation agreement would be signed in the coming week and confirmed the date of the launch.
After the Slovenian police told the STA that the countries are yet to sign the implementation agreement, the Foreign Ministry said that the document would be signed in the coming week. It did not say who would sign it, however, Prime Minister Marjan Šarec is due in the Vatican on Thursday.
The patrols are to be the same as those patrolling the border between Italy and France, according to a report by the Austrian press agency APA. It adds that so far nearly 800 illegal migrants have been detected entering Italy from Slovenia this year.
The joint patrols were proposed by Slovenia's Foreign Minister Miro Cerar. At the same time, he underlined that internal border controls in the Schengen zone were unacceptable to Slovenia. The issues of security and migrations must be addressed together so as to avoid border controls, he said.
