A man hugs his daughter after arriving yesterday on the Greek island of Lesbos along with other migrants and refugees, after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey. At least eight people drowned when a boat carrying migrants from Turkey sank off the Greek island of Kos, the coastguard said.

DPA
Belgrade
Countries on the Balkan migration route have agreed to carry out joint measures aiming to stem the flow of refugees across their soil and step up supervision and security.
A conference of interior ministry officials from Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia agreed to enhance identification, supervision and data sharing in order to improve accommodation planning and security.
“Each country on the migrants’ path faced challenges on its own. That leads to partial solutions, that is not good,” Slovenian Interior Minister Vesna Gyorkos Znidar said after the talks.
Croatia, another heavily-trodden stop on the migration route, was not represented at the talks.
The officials at the talks also focused on the terrorist attacks in Paris.
Highlighting the importance of migrant registration, they pointed out that a passport found at the scene of one of the attacks had been traced back across the Balkans.
“The fact that we swiftly reconstructed his path to the EU highlights benefits of migrant registration – but only registration isn’t enough, so we discussed the possibility of strengthening the identification procedure,” Gyorkos Znidar said.
Slowing the passage through Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia also means that accommodation capacity must be increased, she added.
The basic goal is to complement EU measures targeting the influx of migrants from Turkey.
Managing the flow once refugees leave Turkey is “difficult, maybe impossible”, Gyorkos Znidar said.
Officials estimated that the recent slight decline in the number of migrant arrivals was attributable to the approaching winter.
“Without a systemic solution, in the spring we can expect the same, possibly even more,” Gyorkos Znidar said.
National police directors were due to meet in the coming days to proceed with the implementation of measures agreed in Slovenia.
Separately, Croatian Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said he urged the EU Migrations Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos to call a meeting of Balkan route interior ministers, including those from Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.
More than 500,000 people have travelled the Balkan route this year, though the exact path has shifted as countries implemented border controls.
Beginning from the Turkish coast, migrants take boats to the Greek islands and mainland, before heading to Macedonia and then Serbia.
Some then travelled through Hungary and on to Austria, but after Hungary sealed its border, the path of choice became Croatia, Slovenia and then Austria.
Croatia has registered more than 400,000 people, many of them refugees from war zones in the Middle East, since it became a part of the route in mid-September.
More passed through Serbia but, as is the case with all other countries on the route, virtually none of the people passing decided to stay and seek asylum there.
Following the Paris terrorist attacks, the main concern of countries on the route is that Germany, the main destination for many migrants, may stop taking in refugees and cause a massive backlog to the south.
Preparing for that, Slovenia has already started building a razor-wire barrier along the border with Croatia, while Macedonia began preparing the ground for one on the border with Greece.
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said that his country will not erect barriers regardless of what happens further along the route.
“When they stop them in Germany and Sweden, we’ll see what we’ll do, but even then we will not roll out the barbed wire,” Vucic said during a visit to the Presevo refugee registration centre, located on the border with Macedonia.