Some European states want the EU to finance the construction of walls on their territory to combat immigration.
The debate resurfaced during the last summary of the 27, held on February 9, and the question is still topical in relation to the surge of sub -Saharans in the countries of the southern shore of the Mediterranean, particularly in Tunisia and Morocco.
If Austria requests that the European budget is used to strengthen the closure erected by Bulgaria at its border with Turkey, the European Commission has always refused to make the Union ‘money for the construction of barbed wire.
Europe must remain a land of welcome and it would even be a shame, explain certain states, to build a wall in Europe with European stars on it.
Already in October 2021, twelve countries had asked that the EU finance this type of wall, to respond to the arrivals of migrants via Belarus.
The Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer had expressed, at the summit, his satisfaction with regard to the European Commission’s commitment to support pilot projects in Bulgaria and Romania. “
If such funding is deemed legally possible by the president of the European Council Charles Michel, the European Commission has so far refused that EU money is going to “walls and barbed wire”.
The Community Executive, however, allows the European budget to serve surveillance equipment supporting these infrastructure, such as cameras or motion detectors.
According to the Gue/GNL group (radical left) to the European Parliament, firmly opposed to the walls, between 2014 and 2022 the total length of the fences built on the external borders of the EU and within the EU and the Schengen space increased from 315 to more than 2000 km.
