EUROPE
Updated Nov. 11, 2021 Wall Street Journal
BERLIN—A standoff over the fate of thousands of migrants camped in the forests of Belarus trying to enter Poland has pushed the European Union to embrace steps its leaders once considered controversial: explicitly paying for fences at the EU’s frontiers and pushing back people who attempt to cross.
Before the migration crisis of 2015, when over a million asylum seekers poured into Europe at the height of the Syrian civil war, the EU traditionally deemed accepting refugees to be a humanitarian imperative. Now, amid growing popular backlash and the rise of anti-immigration political forces, that position is shifting.
In a bloc that long held itself up as a magnet for people leaving poorer or war-torn countries, tolerance is growing for previously contentious practices such as forcing immigrants back across its borders, a tactic now deployed by Polish and other Eastern European member states bordering Belarus.
Europeans now regularly see social-media videos and TV news clips of migrants escorted by the military of Belarus—a dictatorship and Russia’s closest ally—toward the Polish border, with Moscow’s bombers flying above. The situation is prompting the EU to abandon a long-held principle of not officially financing barriers along the frontiers of a union that holds freedom of movement as a core value, European officials say.
The bloc’s political leadership, the European Council—which groups the heads of government—is asking its executive branch, the European Commission, to create legal arrangements to allow the EU to finance border walls and other immediate measures in response to what they said is a hybrid attack from Belarus. “We are going to talk about physical infrastructure and the possibility of its financing. I am talking about a physical infrastructure that could better protect the EU,” said Charles Michel, president of the Council.
Europe Weighs Border Walls as Migrants Mass in Belarus at Poland’s Frontier
The European Union is adopting a tougher stance toward migration in response to what officials see as a hybrid attack from a close Russian ally
By Drew Hinshaw and Bojan PancevskiUpdated Nov. 11, 2021 Wall Street Journal
BERLIN—A standoff over the fate of thousands of migrants camped in the forests of Belarus trying to enter Poland has pushed the European Union to embrace steps its leaders once considered controversial: explicitly paying for fences at the EU’s frontiers and pushing back people who attempt to cross.
Before the migration crisis of 2015, when over a million asylum seekers poured into Europe at the height of the Syrian civil war, the EU traditionally deemed accepting refugees to be a humanitarian imperative. Now, amid growing popular backlash and the rise of anti-immigration political forces, that position is shifting.
In a bloc that long held itself up as a magnet for people leaving poorer or war-torn countries, tolerance is growing for previously contentious practices such as forcing immigrants back across its borders, a tactic now deployed by Polish and other Eastern European member states bordering Belarus.
Europeans now regularly see social-media videos and TV news clips of migrants escorted by the military of Belarus—a dictatorship and Russia’s closest ally—toward the Polish border, with Moscow’s bombers flying above. The situation is prompting the EU to abandon a long-held principle of not officially financing barriers along the frontiers of a union that holds freedom of movement as a core value, European officials say.
The bloc’s political leadership, the European Council—which groups the heads of government—is asking its executive branch, the European Commission, to create legal arrangements to allow the EU to finance border walls and other immediate measures in response to what they said is a hybrid attack from Belarus. “We are going to talk about physical infrastructure and the possibility of its financing. I am talking about a physical infrastructure that could better protect the EU,” said Charles Michel, president of the Council.
