Greek plan for border fence attacked

A Greek plan to build a 12.5km fence at its border with Turkey to deter illegal immigrants and asylum seekers has been attacked by opposition parties and a group supporting migrants.

Athens announced its intention this week to erect a fence at Evros, the spot in its 200km border with Turkey where most immigrants cross over into Greece, an entry point for the European Union. It was unclear when work on the fence would start but political observers expect it to be completed this year.

Arrivals of illegal immigrants through the northern Greek border rose 369 per cent in the nine months to the end of September 2010 compared with the previous year, according to Frontex, the EU border agency.

Manolis Othonas, deputy minister for the protection of citizens’ rights, defended the plan to set up the fence in a radio interview, predicting that it would reduce the flow of immigrants.

Christos Papoutsis, minister for the protection of citizens’ rights, announced the plan on Monday. His proposal received an unenthusiastic response in Brussels, where the European Commission said fences were “short-term measures” that did nothing to address underlying migration challenges.

Greece’s EU neighbours are worried that asylum seekers who enter the bloc through Greece can then settle in other countries. A handful of nations including Britain and the Netherlands have stopped sending asylum seekers back to Greece, where they can be returned as their country of first arrival in the EU, as the large number of migrants there has led to a processing backlog.

The situation in Greece prompted the French and German interior ministers last month to highlight “well-known difficulties that are currently fragilising the Schengen [border-free European travel] area” – a reference to the fact that migrants who arrive in Greece can move freely through the EU.

Mr Othonas said “the situation cannot linger any longer” and implicitly criticised the statement by the European Commission. He said Greek society had reached its “tolerance limits” and stressed that illegal immigration was a European problem and should be dealt with in co-operation with other European countries. “We will not build a wall to separate the immigrants from the local population. We protect our borders,” he added.

The Athens-based Network of Social Support to Immigrants and Refugees, a non-governmental organisation, warned that the EU was building “the new walls of the Fortress Europe” and said the fence would be a symbolic expression of the “new European apartheid”.

The rightwing Laos party attacked the Socialist government for delayed action, claiming a million illegal immigrants had entered the country.

The Coalition of the Left urged the government to delay plans to erect the fence, accusing the government of a “double hypocritical and inhumane” policy against the immigrants.

It said the initiative was illegal and would prove ineffective in stemming the flow of immigrants in the area of Evros.