Serbia and Croatia on Tuesday began transporting refugees across their mutual border, eliminating a bottleneck that would force refugees to wait in the open in the freezing cold, dpa reported. Instead of walking to the border at a defunct crossing between the villages of Berkasovo in Serbia and Bapska in Croatia, the refugees now ride to Croatia aboard a train from the nearby Serbian town of Sid. Four or five trains, depending on the number of arrivals, are expected to make the trip daily, Serbian Labour and Welfare Minister Aleksandar Vulin said. The refugees will ride to the new transit centre in Slavonski Brod, 120 kilometres to the west, with a capacity to shelter 5,000 people. From there they will be transported directly to Slovenia, under an arrangement the two countries put in place a week earlier. The system, which includes a more thorough control over the flow of refugees, was agreed to in a meeting of EU and Western Balkan leaders in Brussels in October. The so-called Balkan migration route is the main path for hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly refugees from war zones in the Middle East, to reach Gewrmany and other wealthy western European countries.
