BILD: Mr President, in order to stop the influx of refugees, it has been planned that Turkey will receive six billion euros and that visa requirements will be lifted. At the same time, Macedonia has to do the „dirty work“ for the EU at the border with Greece, as Vice Chancellor Gabriel calls it. Do you feel you have been taken for a fool?
Gjorge Ivanov: „This is not the first time that Macedonia has been let down by the EU, we already know the feeling! No one helped us when we took on 360 000 refugees during the Kosovo War. That’s why we have now reacted proactively – our army is protecting our borders. Let’s face it: in the refugee crisis, we are now paying for the mistakes of the EU. We already had to spend 25 million euros in tax money. We already declared a state of emergency. And what have we received from Europe? Nothing! Not a single cent. Instead, we as a non-EU country now have to protect Europe from an EU country, that is, Greece.“
BILD: You are also not a Schengen member, but you are protecting the Schengen border …
Ivanov: „Yes, we are nothing here, not an EU country, not a Schengen country, not a NATO country. Nobody wants us. And still, we are protecting Europe from a European country that is insufficiently controlling the refugees or has simply sent them on. In the refugee crisis, the security situation has been entirely ignored. If we had trusted Brussels and had not reacted on our own initiative, we would already have been flooded with jihadists.“
BILD: What do you mean?
Ivanov: „Look at these passports and papers. They are all forged or stolen. We have already seized 9,000 of them. Some so-called refugees are travelling through the whole of Europe with false identities, and Greece is simply stamping their papers so that they continue on their journey. We have to assume that many of these people who were travelling with forged papers want to enter the EU via the refugee route as radical fighters.“
BILD: Germany did not want to help you either?
Ivanov: „No! We needed equipment for collecting biometric data and Germany always refused to provide anything. But we found other states that were able to help us. It is totally absurd: we are concerned not with money, but with the security of the entire continent. But obviously nobody cares about that. Look: after the Paris attacks, we were asked whether we had any information, but only after the event. We told the authorities that ten people with the same identity as the assassins had entered the country.“
