Between the cities of Kapitan Andreevo and Edirne there is the intersection of three borders: Bulgaria, Turkey Greece. Little is said about it, but it is a crucial junction for cultural and geopolitical issues. Virtually Europe begins, although some take credit for the Bosphorus, a three-hour drive to the southeast. Europe begins and with it all its fragility.
From the Bulgarian-Turkish border, a crossroads of many dirt, part of it unloads the barrel of a defenseless continent that recognizes itself in finance and bureaucracy, but it glosses over identity and the inconvenient it entails. From Kapitan Andreevo masses of poor people pass, refugees and profiteers who cut Eastern Europe, the second pincer of that grip of desperation and cunning that besieges the old continent.
From Bulgaria a part of the migratory flow crosses mainland Greece, goes back to Macedonia and arrives in Serbia where it seeks the Hungarian or the Croatian shore to return to the EU. In the absence of a common policy, each state does for itself, given its position, its identity and its electorate.
Bulgaria is not part of Schengen (Greece yes) but has nevertheless sent the first 1000 soldiers to Kapitan Andreevo to manage a more difficult situation every day.
Greece, taken from another and strong in an economically and socially unenviable position for those who emigrate, lets it filter without worries. The passage through Serbia, in turn external to the Union and hostage of its international purgatory, does nothing but postpone the masses in transit to Hungary and Croatia. However, the identity policy of Orban in Budapest leaves little choice for Croatia. Zagreb finds itself caught between two fires: the official line of the progressive government of Milanovic and the endemic nationalist thrust of the electoral base. If the former obliges the country to conduct apparently understanding towards the "migrant question", the latter stiffens on the value of independence gained by blood twenty years ago and does not give discounts. In the most complete European institutional vacuum, the only solution for Croatia is to accelerate the passage of refugees to Slovenia before Ljubljana closes the borders and at the same time stem the entry of other flows from Serbia.
In this light, the refugee node is tightening because it revives a dramatically rooted spectrum in Croatian public opinion: relations with the Serbs. Where Europe has changed its face several times in thirty years, it seems that destiny should lack balance. There are eight border crossings between Serbia and Croatia. Until the 1991 there were not and the flags of the two countries with white, red and blue panslavi colors, synthesis of infinite historical legacies, were united in the unique Yugoslav drape with Tito's red star. 
With the decision to close both sides of the Batrovci-Bajakovo crossing on the Zagreb-Belgrade axis to heavy traffic, Croatia and Serbia are isolated today.
The decision, far beyond the refugee contingency, recalls tragic scenarios. The Ilok and Erdut crossings on the Danube and the southernmost of Tovarnik are all within a half hour drive from Vukovar. Right here at the end '91 had the last inglorious start the JNA (Yugoslav People's Army) which accompanied by Serbian paramilitaries was preparing to rape the heroic Croatian city. We are in eastern Slavonia, which with the proclamation of the Serbian Republic of Krajina of the '91 became a disputed land between Serbs and Croats and the scene of unusual clashes for contemporary Europe. It is self-evident that in the collective imagination the idea of restoring an embankment where the most atrocious war passed is a deja vu which makes no scandal, indeed.
In the meantime Hungary is blocking the Croatian border and the Magyar Honvédség they mobilize. Croatia notes the largely undervalued refugee emergency, and in turn prepares the army for faster management. If this were not enough, Slovenia raises the barrier in Bregana, until yesterday a symbolic stop at only 30 km from Zagreb.
In view of the refusal of Slovakia and Romania to adhere to the plan of redistribution of migrants for each EU member state and of nervousness in this regard of Poland and the Czech Republic, it is understood that Eastern Europe has become the litmus test of European chaos.
If Minister Gentiloni fears the "catastrophic" end of Schengen under the blows of national self-interest, then one wonders what Schengen has been used for so far and if the institutions really represent popular sentiments.
Imeanwhile Hollande with one hand keeps his guard high at the crossings with Italy and with the other stick the countries of Eastern Europe, recalling that Europe has grown on common values. While peoples and territories languish, we are all waiting to clarify what they are.
