Migrants, 12 EU countries who want a ‘wall’

Twelve EU countries, not just the ‘tough guys’ of the Visegrad group, are asking the European Commission to amend the Schengen Borders Code to allow states to erect “physical barriers” to protect the Union’s external borders, financed by EU budget. The “physical barriers”, twelve interior ministers write to the Commission, “seem to be an effective measure of border protection, serving the interests of the entire Union, not just the Member States of first arrival”. Read also For the 12, plus Slovenia, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council, this “legitimate” measure should be “adequately financed by the EU budget, as a priority”. The same should apply to the Green Line in Cyprus, which is not an external border of the EU because Brussels has never recognized the Turkish occupation of the eastern part of the island. The letter, revealed by the EU Observer on the day when the ministers of the interior meet in Luxembourg precisely to talk about migration, is signed by the ministers of Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia. Founding countries are missing from the list, but it is not limited to the four of the Visegrad group (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic). There are also Mediterranean countries, such as Cyprus and Greece, and even a state governed by a Social Democratic premier, Mette Fredriksen’s Denmark, not new to the hard line on migration issues. year has put on the table a legislative package that has not made progress, due to persistent divisions between Member States. However, Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson was open and understanding towards the reasons of the 12. “We really need – she said – to strengthen the protection of the EU’s external borders. Some Member States are building barriers and I understand them. I have nothing against it. But I don’t think it is a good idea to use EU funds “which are” limited “and which are used for other things, to” build them “. The Commission has “presented proposals that allow states to deal with crisis situations and I believe that states must approve, perhaps amending them, the proposals that are on the table”, instead of presenting “new proposals”. EU presidency: we support 12 states on barriers The rotating presidency of the EU Council is decisively removed from the Commission: Slovenian Interior Minister Ales Hojs says that Ljubljana supports the position of the twelve. “Whoever has an external border has additional obligations – he remembers – if I had to choose between rejections and build a barrier, I have no doubts: I would build a barrier”. Slovenia, he assures, “will support the proposal” of the 12, also because “after the disaster of 2015, Slovenia has decided to erect barriers, at its own expense, on part of the Croatian border, and will continue to do so in the future” to stem flows. “It is clear that if we stop 14,000 irregular migrants a year at an internal EU border, then the protection of the EU’s external border is not efficient. And it is our duty to protect the borders. Slovenia will support this proposal”, concludes. To determine this shift, in the light of the sun, towards the hard line on migratory matters, which the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been preaching for years (Hungary has built a physical barrier, with barbed wire, to repel migrants who attempt the route Balkan), is what happens on the border with Belarus. The regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko, hit by the sanctions decided by the EU in retaliation for the hijacking of a Ryanair Athens-Vilnius flight for the sole purpose of arresting an inconvenient journalist and for the repression against anti-government demonstrators, has been sending for months to the borders with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania migrants flown in from Iraq, Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon and Syria. Migrants who are “lured to Minsk”, where they are “hosted in state hotels”, as Johansson said, before being escorted to the border in vans “without signs”. It is not the first time that a third country has used migrants as a weapon of pressure against the EU or Member States: Turkey did so on the land border with Greece in the spring of 2020, just before the Covid pandemic broke out. -19, and Morocco did so against Spain, in retaliation against the decision to treat a leading exponent of the Polisario Front from Covid. The Lithuanian Minister of the Interior, Agné Bilotaité in Luxembourg explained the ‘rationale’ of the request to the Commission: “This summer – she said – was very hard and difficult for Lithuania. What happens in illegal immigration is a hybrid attack against Lithuania and all of Europe. In this situation we need changes in the EU legal framework and in migration policies, because we should be able to respond more strongly when we face hybrid attacks of this type “. Meanwhile, the Commission is having a hard time advancing the migration pact proposed in September 2020, which is firm. Commissioner Ylva Johansson, in front of an investigation by various European media, including Der Spiegel, which documented illegal push-backs to the external borders of Croatia and Greece, praises Zagreb because she assured that it will investigate, but beats Athens which, makes it clear, has not ensured an adequate follow-up to what has been published in the media (German, incidentally). The Commission does “much more” to enforce the agreements made with Turkey in 2016. “Every rubber boat that leaves the Turkish coast” violates that agreement, the minister stressed. “Of course” Greece will investigate the “alleged illegal rejections”, but “we expect – he underlines – that the European Commission will do much more for the external dimension, for the protection of external borders, for the repatriation of those who do not have the right to international protection “. Migrations will be specifically on the agenda of the European Council on 21 and 22 October, at the request of Italy and as a follow-up to the June summit. The redistribution of migrants is not in question, as it was not in June. Since this is a highly divisive issue, the choice is to proceed on the side of the issue on which a consensus can be found, that is, on the external dimension. The Commission is expected to put specific figures and commitments on the table to work with the countries of origin and transit of migrants, in particular those of North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, the situation in Afghanistan continues to be viewed with some concern, a country in which a humanitarian catastrophe is at risk. Johansson stressed that EU states have welcomed around 22,000 Afghans, but stressed the need to examine and carefully screen people arriving from that country.