Ljubljana - The new government has vowed to remove the wire fence from Slovenia's south border and if it delivers on that, there will be an opportunity to reflect on how the fence got there in the first place, Dnevnik says on Wednesday, pointing to Europe's racism when it comes to refugee crises.

The wire fence cost Slovenian taxpayers EUR 30 million and has been making life harder for border area locals for seven years.

Wondering how this could happen to Slovenia, the paper says that the most unpleasant answer would be to say "this is just who we are".

"A more down-to-earth and at the same time more elegant answer is that Western European countries are co-responsible for inhumane practices of countries in the belt between Austria and Italy, and Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, where migrants are persecuted, beaten, tortured and left to die by the police."

West Europe exerts pressure on the Balkan region using "cunning political levers" to ensure that "its migration floodgates are being lowered and raised - also according to current economic needs".

The new Slovenian government has pledged to introduce a different migration policy. The Interior Ministry will set up a migration advisory group tomorrow that will comprise NGOs including those that the previous government accused, without proof, of smuggling migrants.

In the wake of the war in Ukraine, legal experts note that the border regime is so wide open to Ukrainian refugees that it affects the situation of other asylum seekers as well.

"It would be difficult to explain why asylum seekers from Asia and Africa are being detained and turned away when Ukrainian refugees are free to travel to the European Union and back to Ukraine and back again as often as they like. In its response to the Ukrainian refugee catastrophe, Europe has shown that it has no problem with humanity towards refugees.

"But it has another problem - skin colour. Is this perhaps the answer to the question about the fence?" wonders the commentary titled What Does the Wire Tell Us?