Romania has one of Europe’s weakest economies and remains outside the Schengen area. During the migration “crisis,” it was not an important destination or transit site for the hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees who entered Europe. However, following the construction of high-tech security fences along the Bulgarian-Turkish border in 2016, as well as increased naval patrols in the Aegean Sea, the country began to witness a steady stream of refugees and asylum seekers arriving via the Black Sea, brought by smugglers attempting to avoid crackdowns elsewhere. Numbers peaked between July and August 2017, when 475 people arrived having undertaken the risky sea crossing.
While the number of arrivals remained small, some observers noted that the country’s authorities were “totally overwhelmed.” Nevertheless, key government officials sought to assuage public anxieties, in contrast to the discourses of fear employed by politicians in neighbouring countries. Romania’s Interior Minister, for example, said at the time: “What I want people to understand very well is this is a phenomenon that we can manage; we are neither hesitant nor overwhelmed.”.
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