Huge lines at the Hungarian borders like there is no pandemic

Due to guest workers returning home for the holidays and the modification of pandemic measures, huge lines of waiting cars were formed on Sunday morning at several border control points entering Serbia.

Those who wanted to leave Hungary at the border checkpoint of Röszke by car needed to wait 5 hours, and those travelling by bus had to wait 4. Meanwhile, buses entering the country also had to expect an entire hour of hold-up. Heavy traffic exiting Hungary was held up by 5 hours as well.

The situation was the same at the checkpoints of Ásotthalom and Tompa, too. At the former, cars were waiting for an hour while at the latter, they spent around 3 waiting. Moreover, at Tompa, heavy traffic was delayed by an hour in both directions, wrote autoszektor.hu

The whole situation was caused by the Serbian government strengthening pandemic rules that will enter into effect on Monday.

Starting from next week, foreign citizens who wish to enter Serbia need to present a negative coronavirus test, taken within 48 hours, at the checkpoints,

while Serbian citizens can return home without taking a test, but in this case, 10 days of quarantine is awaiting them.

There were huge jams on the borders of Western Balkan countries as well, due to guest workers heading home. It is not a big surprise, as the temporary control of the Schengen border was extended less than a month ago. 

Despite the strict measures and warnings with which they tried to avoid Western Balkan guest workers returning home for the holidays from their workplaces in Western Europe, many of them decided to travel anyway, causing huge jams on the borders at the weekend, reported the Serbian public service channel RTS on Sunday.

The record is held by the checkpoint of Slovenia-Croatia with 7-8 hours of standing in line,

but people wanting to cross had to be patient for several hours on the Croatian-Serbian and the Croatian-Bosnian borders as well.

As always, most of the Turkish, North Macedonian, Serbian, and Bosnian citizens chose their car as a means of transport to return home to relax and enjoy Christmas and the New Year. They usually spend 2-3 weeks or even a month at a time in their countries with their families.

Read alsoEU to revamp Schengen system to strengthen border security

Source: autoszektor.hu