Border control

Eight foreign nationals from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Morocco, who were trying to cross the border into Hungary illegally, were found by border police at Nadlac hiding in two lorries carrying polystyrene and metal profiles for companies in Germany and France.

Ljubljana – The government has expanded the list of exceptions for entry in Slovenia without quarantine or the need to produce a negative PCR test, to include accredited journalists and persons who enter the country for emergency reasons. Coronavirus tests performed in the US and UK have meanwhile been added to the list of valid tests at border crossings.

Queues of trucks waiting to leave the country on Tuesday afternoon are stretching for more than 25 kilometers, before Nadlac and Varsand, and the waiting times for control are almost eight hours in Varsand.

Large lines of trucks formed, on Tuesday morning, at the main crossing points on the border with Hungary, on the way out of Romania, due to the restrictions applied to heavy traffic until Monday evening, so that drivers are forced to wait between 80 and 420 minutes to reach border control.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reminds that following the alerts for stopped Bulgarian citizens travelling by public transport and entering Germany from the Czech Republic, that, strict rules for admitting foreign nationals are valid for Germany due to the COVID-19restrictive measures

Ljubljana – EU ministers in charge of tourism have agreed it is important to ensure simple and predictable border crossing regimes, as they held a virtual meeting on Monday. This effort will expectedly be made easier with a digital vaccination passport the EU intends to propose later this month.

The western Arad border police have found, within the last 24 hours, 28 immigrants who were trying to illegally get out of Romania, hidden in trucks or walking in the field, all being from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. In a truck driven by a Romanian, verified at the Nadlac II Border Crossing, there were six immigrants found.

Romania's border traffic plunged almost 60 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year, as approximately 28.5 million people moved in or out of the country. "Traffic values at the border checkpoints stood at about 28.5 million people (23.8 million EU citizens and 4.7 million non-EU citizens), both on the inbound and on the outbound.

Greece is one step closer to implementing a 35-million-euro program that will bring it in line with the European Union's Entry/Exit System (EES) for registering the biometric data of third-country nationals crossing into or out of the Schengen Area.

The Greek government extended the validity of its decision to close land borders with North Macedonia, Albania and Turkey, as well as the ban on third-country nationals entering Greece for another two weeks, until 22 February 2021, BGNES reported.