Build a wall! Leading Europhile MEP channels Donald Trump with radical migrant crisis plan
Belarus: Expert discusses ‘influx’ of migrants to Lithuania
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Mr Weber, leader of the EPP Group in the EU Parliament, called on eurocrats to do more to protect themselves from Rogue Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. The German accused Europe’s last dictator of smuggling people into the EU and proposed the construction of a border wall to keep them out. To fully protect the bloc from the fence would have to span more than 400 miles, covering Poland, Lithuania and Latvia’s borders with Belarus.
But it is Lithuania most concerned with Belarusian President Lukashenko’s human trafficking efforts into the EU.
Mr Weber told the Politico website: “The continued attack on the European external border by dictator Lukashenko is a strategic foreign policy challenge for the whole of Europe.
“We expect full and unconditional support from the European Commission to support the Lithuanian authorities to strengthen the external border.”
The German proposed, “if needed”, the “construction of the border fence, help to process and send back the arrivals and hold all people, businesses and governments that facilitate this cynical human tracking scheme to account”.
A number of EU countries have already sent aid, such as tends, beds and generators, to Lithuania to assist with the increasing number of arrivals through the border with Belarus.
Lithuania requested assistance from the European Commission, which is using the European Civil Protection Mechanism, to send support.
A statement by the Brussels-based EU executive said migrants and asylum seekers coming from the Middle East and Africa are entering Lithuania via the border with Belarus.
EU crisis management commissioner Janez Lenarcic said: “Lithuania’s border is an external EU border, which is currently experiencing an unprecedented influx of migrants and asylum seekers.
“These people, many of the vulnerable, need urgent support such as food and shelter. The European Union and other member states will not leave Lithuania in this difficult situation alone.”
Home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson added: “The authoritarian regime in Belarus is exploiting human beings for political reasons: this is completely unacceptable.
“The European Union and the Member States are showing strong solidarity with Lithuania, and together we fully support civil society in Belarus. Humanitarian support will make sure basic needs such as food and shelter are met. The Commission is ready to provide further emergency funding to Lithuania as needed.
“Frontex is deploying personnel and equipment to protect the European external border, and Europol is deploying staff to help safeguard European internal security.”
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The EU’s Frontex border agency is to deploy about 60 officers on the Lithuanian border with Belarus.
There have been more than 2,000 migrant crossings over the frontier this year, up from around 80 in 2020.
Some 800 migrants entered in the first week of July alone, according to Frontex.
Ms Johansson has suggested that migrants have been able to fly into Minsk, the Belarusian capital, on direct flights from Baghdad and Istanbul.
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President Lukashenko has previously warned that his border authorities would no longer prevent migrants from crossing into the EU.
Earlier this month, he said: “If some think that we will close our borders with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine and become a camp for people fleeing Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Tunisia, they are mistaken.”
The increase of migrant crossings follows an EU decision to impose sanctions on the Lukashenko regime following his recent election victory a year ago, which is widely viewed as fraudulent.
Those sanctions were bolstered following the hijacking of an airliner by the Belarusian authorities in order to arrest Roman Protasevich, a dissident journalist.
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