Greece starts work on border fence

It’s a somewhat less ambitious project than fending the 1,951 mile U.S.-Mexico border, but not necessarily less controversial. EU Observer reports:

Greece has started construction of a 12.6-km-long razor-wire-topped fence designed to keep out migrants but described as "pointless" by the European Commission.

The fence, costing an estimated €5.5 million, is being built in the Evros region on the Greek-Turkish border where the vast majority of irregular migrants try to cross into the EU. It is to be completed in September.

The European Commission on Tuesday (7 February) said the fence is a national issue. But it also poured scorn on the project. "Fences and walls are short-term solutions to measures that do not solve the problem. The EU is not and will not co-finance this fence … It is pointless," a spokesman for home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told press in Brussels.

Just one day earlier, Christos Papoustis, a former European commissioner and currently Greece’s minister for citizen protection had said the fence has both "practical and symbolic value."

The Greek-Turkish border is for the most part a 180-kilometre-long river patrolled in part by Frontex, the EU’s Warsaw-based border control agency. Near the city of Orestiada, the river loops east and runs for about 12 kilometres on the Turkish side, with the Greek-Turkish land border located in this loop.

The fence may not be the best of the near-bankrupt Greek state’s resources at the moment, but the country does have an understandable gripe about the EU’s so-called Dublin regulation, which holds point-of-entry countries — mostly on Europe’s periphery — responsible for handling asylum cases. Under the law, other countries deport asylum-seekers back to their country-of-entry for processing.