Croatia hopes to join Schengen zone in 2020 – ministry

Croatia expects to meet the technical criteria for the border-free European Union’s Schengen zone by year-end and hopes to join it by 2020, an Interior Ministry official said on Tuesday. Croatia is one of six EU members not to be part of the passport-free Schengen zone. “The European Commission must then assess if we’re ready to join which we hope it will do before the next elections for the European Parliament next May,” Terezija Gras, state secretary in the Interior Ministry, told Reuters. Gras said Schengen zone membership would help to improve security in Croatia and the wider EU. “Control over the EU’s external borders is the most demanding aspect of our preparations. We have already fully equipped our border with Serbia and now we’re doing it on the border with Bosnia,” Gras said. Croatia is on the route taken by many migrants from the Middle East and central Asia. By the end of September, the number of unauthorized migrants in Croatia had risen by more than 30 percent from an estimated 4,800 people last year, police said. Most of them were from Afghanistan.