Ministers from 12 countries, including Poland, Lithuania and Greece, say in a letter that funding is needed as part of reforms aimed at countering neighboring countries’ efforts to make migration a weapon.
Ministers issued the call after the European Commission (EC) refused to fund a fence on the Lithuanian-Belarusian border.
As part of an expanded hybrid attack on the regime of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, efforts have been made in recent months to send thousands of illegal immigrants to Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, most of them arriving in Belarus as tourists from Iraq.
Poland and the European Union have accused the Minsk regime of trying to avenge support for the Belarusian opposition and sanctions against Belarus in response to last year’s violent crackdown on protests.
“The EU needs to adapt the existing legal framework to the new reality, allowing us to properly address attempts to make illegal migration an instrument for political ends, as well as other hybrid threats,” the ministerial said in a letter to the EC.
The letter states that “the physical barrier appears to be an effective border protection measure that serves the EU as a whole,” and not just the countries where illegal immigrants arrive first. The letter emphasized that fencing at borders should be adequately funded from the EU budget.
Brussels has so far refrained from funding fences at Member States’ borders, insisting that the current legal framework only allows EU budget funds to be used for “border management systems”.
An EC spokesman confirmed that the letter had been received and would be answered.
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