According to the Commission’s Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs, Slovenia has notified controls at its land borders with Croatia and Hungary from 22 June to 21 December 2026.
The stated reasons include continued threats to public policy and internal security linked to terrorist threats, organised crime, human smuggling and arms trafficking. Slovenia also refers to the risk of terrorist infiltration into migratory flows via the Western Balkans, hybrid threats, Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine and instability in the Middle East, particularly Syria and Iran.
The new notification replaces Slovenia’s previous control period, which runs from 22 December 2025 to 21 June 2026. That earlier notification also covered the land borders with Croatia and Hungary and cited similar concerns, including organised crime, migration-related risks and hybrid threats.
The Slovenian extension is part of a wider pattern of temporary internal border checks across the Schengen area. The Commission’s current list also shows controls in place in countries including Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Austria, Sweden and France. Austria’s current notification runs until 15 June 2026, covering land borders with Czechia, Hungary and Slovenia, as well as land and river borders with Slovakia.
However, the European Commission has now called on nine Schengen countries — Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia and Sweden — to work towards phasing out internal border controls. According to the Commission, such controls remain possible under EU law where there is a serious threat to public policy or internal security, but they should remain exceptional, temporary and proportionate.
The Commission said alternatives are available, including non-systematic police checks, mobile biometric identification and vehicle-tracking technologies. It also pointed to the EU’s new migration and asylum framework and digital border-management systems as factors that should reduce the need for checks inside Schengen.
Magnus Brunner, European Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration, said member states were now in a position to work towards phasing out controls at internal borders, adding that irregular crossings of the EU’s external borders had fallen by 40% this year.
