Slovenia, Croatia and Italy signed a memorandum on trilateral police patrols to be dispatched to the external Schengen border in Croatia as the countries' home affairs ministers met in Nova Gorica on 20 January.

Addressing reporters after the meeting, the host, Slovenia's Interior Minister Boštan Poklukar said joint patrols would help remove the need for internal border checks.

All three ministers said thee main goal was to restore the Schengen regime, which allows passport- and checkpoint-free travel between the countries in the Schengen area.

Italy reintroduced police checks on its border with Slovenia after the start of the hostilities in Gaza in October 2023, leading Slovenia to do the same on its border with Croatia. The border checks have since been extended several times, most recently until late June 2025.

Conditions permitting, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi expects that free movement across the border could be re-established in about a year's time.

The ministers addressed the press after police commissioners from their countries signed an operative memorandum for joint Croatian-Italian-Slovenian border patrols. Details are to be worked out in the coming weeks, which will lead to a three-month trial period.

Poklukar said the mixed patrols would improve the safety of the Schengen border in Croatia, thus fulfilling one of the conditions to abolish internal border checks.

Croatian Interior Minister Davor Božinović was quoted by the Croatian press agency HINA as saying that the cooperation would involve more effective exchange of operative data using existing tools and trilateral patrols. He said that the document represented the way in which the EU would combat illegal migration in the future.

Meanwhile, Piantedosi promised the checks on the border between Slovenia and Italy will not affect events taking place in the city of Nova Gorica and Gorizia across the border during their stint as the European Capital of Culture, which formally starts on 8 February.