Greece is going to triple the barriers on the border with Turkey

The Greek authorities announced plans to significantly increase the length of the wall on the border with Turkey and the intention to request financial support from EU for additional construction.

“The government has decided to expand the border wall further and we have approached the EU with a request for funding,” Migration Minister Panagiotis Mitarakis said. According to him, the steel fence will be extended from the current 40 to 120 kilometers, construction work should begin later this year. Mitarakis did not disclose the estimated cost of the project.

Last year, twelve countries, including Greece, asked the EU for funds for border walls, which are currently financed from national budgets. The European Commission is currently does not pay building walls on the bloc’s outer borders, saying it would divert funds from other migration-related activities, including funding for EU border agency Frontex.

The epic with the construction of a wall on the border with Turkey started in 2011, since then the Greek authorities have been able to build a wall on the most difficult sections with a total length of 40 km. This wall cost the country’s budget more than 100 million euros.

That’s just the result of this wall shows not very high. The problem is that most of the 206-kilometer border between the two countries runs along the Evros River, periodically crossing from one side of the river to the other, which makes it impossible to make the wall solid. Illegals and smugglers actively use this, in fact, making the wall, in which millions have been invested, meaningless.

Earlier, Greece accused its neighbor and NATO ally Turkey of using migration as a means of exerting pressure on the EU countries. Ankara, in turn, rejects this and believes that it has taken on a heavy burden by taking in about 4 million refugees, most of whom fled the civil war in neighboring Syria.

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