Report on the Performance of Activities of the National Preventive Mechanism for 2016 to continue their journey towards their preferred destination countries, passed through the territory of the Republic of Croatia. The reasons for such conduct by the Republic of Croatia and other countries of the so-called Balkan Route, were the fact that 93.4% of these people were citizens of unsafe countries ravaged by war, that destination countries were willing to receive the refugees despite the existing normative framework – especially Dublin Regulation – as well as the fact that the countries where they first entered could not bear such strong migration pressure. On the other hand, measures by means of which European Commission tried to contribute to crisis resolution and which involved permanent mechanism for resettling refugees, common list of safe countries of origin and efficient policy of returning irregular migrants, turned out to be seriously lacking, considering the daily influx of people. Therefore, in March 2016, EU and Turkey concluded a deal on Turkey tightening its borders in order to halt the flows of refugees and migrants who are moving along this route and to prevent their entering the EU. When the EU introduced the so-called open-door policy, which enabled free transit for almost one million people, problems, especially those pertaining to human rights protection, came to the fore in transit and destination countries. Large flow of people caused changes in international relations and relations between neighbouring countries, since the former has become the source of dispute between countries In the public arena of some receiving they are being relocated from and those they are countries, terrorist attacks were being relocated to. The fact that mixed migration unfortunately linked exclusively to the flows included different categories of people who latest migration movements, not to their had decided to leave their countries of origin for actual and more complicated roots, different reasons, who moved and crossed state among which are unsuccessfully borders irregularly, without adequate implemented integration measures. documentation, was referred to as a reason for introducing strict border control and as an explanation for security problems in receiving states. As a result, in the public arena, terrorist attacks that had occurred in some countries were unfortunately directly linked to the newest migrant movements, instead of with their actual and more complicated roots, among which are unsuccessfully implemented integration measures, which is something we deal with in greater detail in the chapter on discrimination based on race, ethnicity or skin colour and national origin. Following EU-Turkey deal, for the sake of ensuring more efficient protection of its state border, which is also the external border of the EU, the Republic of Croatia in an urgent procedure and without holding a public hearing, adopted Act on Amendments to the State Border Protection Act and Act on Amendments to the Act on Defence. The said amendments lay down that the police may be supported by armed forces for the purpose of protecting state borders. Such decision is reached by the Government at the proposal of the Minister of Defence and with previous consent from the President of the Republic of Croatia. The manner in which the said amendments had been adopted as well as their content, initiated proposals for assessing their compliance with the Constitution. Namely, the role of armed forces is to protect sovereignty 38

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