Schengen member states have called on the European Commission to provide more funding for the widening of border security infrastructure including physical border walls.
This comes as Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Norway issued a joint statement calling on the EU to green light the funding.
While critics of physical borders say that they could impede those fleeing war and persecution, some Schengen member states which are regarded as so-called ‘first arrival’ territories – where migrants first reach European soil – say they are struggling to handle the ever increasing numbers of irregular migration.
In 2021 twelve member states (Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia) wrote to the European Commission saying that “Physical barriers appear to be an effective border protection measure that serves the interest of the whole EU, not just member states of first arrival… This legitimate measure should be additionally and adequately funded from the EU budget as a matter of priority.”
The letter also warned that, “Recent developments at the external borders of the European Union (EU) indicate that the EU needs to adapt the existing legal framework to the new realities, enabling us to adequately address attempts of instrumentalisation of illegal migration for political purposes and other hybrid threats,”
1,700 kilometres of walls have reportedly been erected to “to halt irregular border crossings from migrants and refugees” over the last eight years.
The issue of border walls has been hugely controversial in the United States where thousands of illegal immigrants pass over the southern border with Mexico every month with reports that 2.4 million arrests were made in the fiscal year of 2022.
United States Customs and Border Protection say the southern border wall has intercepted “a myriad of threats” including “smuggling, illegal migration, and terrorism”.
The border wall operates “with a suite of technology and infrastructure assets” using “current and future innovation, including autonomous capabilities, to detect and identify threats in near real time.”
“Modern technology enables the exploitation of data collected by sensors, towers, drones, assets, agents, facilities, and other sources informing mission critical decisions in the field,”