Serbian Officials Deny Migrant Centre Rumours

Momir Stojanovic, the chairman of the Serbian parliament's committee for security services control, said on Monday that the EU had no solution for the large number of migrants entering its territory so it could finance the building of a huge centre to house them in the Balkans.

"There is speculation that the EU wants such a centre in the Balkans, and that there is a large chance that the centre will be located in Serbia. There are also rumours that the centre could be located somewhere in southern Serbia," Stojanovic told Belgrade-based newspaper Blic.

He added that Serbian government should not agree to any such proposal.

"I hope that the EU will not pressure Serbia about the construction of the centre because if only 20 per cent of those people decide to stay in Serbia, it could be a major economic and security problem," Stojanovic said.

But Serbian Labour Minister Aleksandar Vulin said that there was no pressure from the EU on Belgrade to build such a centre.

"Serbia has no capacities for such a centre and does not want to launch that project? Serbia is not building any permanent shelter centres for migrants and will not build them," Vulin told Blic on Monday.

Nikola Jovanovic, programme director at the Belgrade-based Centre for International Relations and Sustainable Development, said that the EU apparently gave up its own policy towards Middle East.

"Fearing of the consequences of the new conflicts in the Middle East, Europe is politically and physically distancing itself from the Balkans and trying to protect its 'soft underbelly' - the central European plain," Jovanovic told Belgrade-based newspaper Politika on Monday.

He added that the EU "sooner or later" is going to realise that...