Director of the BiH Border Police, Mirko Kuprešaković, confirmed on Tuesday that from October 12, the application of the electronic entry control system to the territory of the European Union will begin at the border crossings with Croatia, which could cause crowds and longer waits to cross the border.
From October 12, a new system for checking the entry of citizens of third countries into the Schengen area will begin to function, which will mean that all persons entering Croatia with BiH passports will have to give their fingerprints upon first entry, and their photo will be stored.
These data will be used for border checks at each subsequent entry, which means that such a procedure will only have to go through once.
In a statement to Sarajevo’s “Dnevni avaz”, Kuprešaković said that it was definitely agreed upon and there will be no delays.
He expects the Entry/Exit system to be fully operational from 10 April 2026.
In practice, this will mean that from 10 October, passengers with BiH documents will have to exit their vehicles into an area on the Croatian side where cameras are located and where facial scanning and fingerprinting, or biometric data, will be performed.
“We will see how this will work at border crossings, whether it will create more congestion, and of course it will be the same at airports,” said the director of the BiH Border Police.
Kuprešaković also announced that there will be Frontex police officers, or police officers from European Union countries, on the Bosnian side of the border with all neighboring countries in the future, and he expects this to guarantee better surveillance.
“We proposed this with the aim of better combating organized crime, terrorism, smuggling and trafficking in human beings, illegal migration and all other criminal acts that are facing us in this modern era,” he said, adding that it is in the common interest of BiH and the EU to better monitor the so-called the Balkan route used by criminals.
