Slovenia starts building border fence to slow refugee influx

Slovenia on Wednesday started building a fence along the border with Croatia to control the inflow of refugees, the STA news agency reported.

Close to 10,000 refugees arrived Tuesday and Wednesday morning, according to police data. The total in less than a month since Slovenia became a part of the Balkan route was close to 180,000.

Prime Minister Miro Cerar said a day earlier that the fence was necessary as EU measures on the border between Greece and Turkey failed to curb the inflow of people along the Balkan route.

The migrants, many of them refugees fleeing wars in the Middle East, reach western Europe from Turkey, via the Greek Aegean islands and mainland, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria.

Until mid-October, they travelled through Hungary, but when it sealed its borders, the flow diverted in Serbia towards Croatia and Slovenia, the smallest and most stretched country on the route.

The surge of refugees taking the increasingly dangerous ride from Turkey shows no sign of easing, as Greek authorities Wednesday estimated that 5,000 arrived on the islands the day before.

The EU-border protection agency Frontex registered 540,000 arrivals on Greek islands in the first 10 months of 2015. Virtually all wanted to reach wealthy western European countries, mostly Germany.