|
 "By building fences, by deploying barbed wire," he said, "it is
not a solution."
But Avramopoulos has not always preached that message – and his
changing views capture the tangle Europe has got itself into as more
than a million migrants and refugees have floated in on Greek waters
since the start of 2015.
In 2012, when he was Greek minister of defense, Greece built a fence
and electronic surveillance system along its border with Turkey. The
cement and barbed-wire barrier and nearly 2,000 extra guards were
designed to stop a sharp rise in illegal immigrants.
The 62-year-old former diplomat was not directly involved in the
project. But in 2013 he defended it, telling a news conference the
wall had borne fruit. "The entry of illegal immigrants in Greece by
this side has almost been eliminated," he said.
 The official European response to Europe's migrant crisis –
championed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel last August – is for
member states to pull together and provide shelter for people,
especially Syrians, fleeing war or persecution. But in reality, most
members have failed to take their quotas of refugees and nearly a
dozen have built barricades to try to keep both migrants and
refugees out. The bloc is now trying to implement a deal which would
see Turkey take back new arrivals.
The European Union was founded in the ashes of World War Two, in
part on a principle of freedom of movement among member states. But
since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European countries have built or
started 1,200 km (750 miles) of anti-immigrant fencing at a cost of
at least 500 million euros ($570 million), a Reuters analysis of
public data shows. That distance is almost 40 percent of the length
of America's border with Mexico.
Many of these walls separate EU nations from states outside the
bloc, but some are between EU states, including members of Europe's
passport-free zone. Most of the building was started in 2015.
"Wherever there have been large numbers of migrants or refugees
trying to enter the EU, this trend has been followed up by a fence,"
said Irem Arf, a researcher on European Migration at rights group
Amnesty International.
For governments, fences seem like a simple solution. Building them
is perfectly legal and countries have the right to control who
enters their territory. Each new fence in Europe has sharply curbed
the numbers of irregular immigrants on the route they blocked.
For at least one company, fences work. The firm which operates a
tunnel between France and Britain says that since a major security
upgrade around its French terminal last October, migrants have
ceased to cause trouble.
"There have been no disruptions to services since mid October 2015,
so we can say that the combination of the fence and the additional
police presence has been highly effective," Eurotunnel spokesman
John Keefe said.
But in the short term at least, they have not stopped people trying
to come. Instead, they have diverted them, often to longer, more
dangerous routes. And rights groups say some fences deny
asylum-seekers the chance to seek shelter, even though European law
states that everyone has the right to a fair and efficient asylum
procedure.
Forced to find another way, migrants and refugees often turn to
people-smugglers.
 CROWD CONTROL
Greece's border fence was one of the first, and Avramopoulos still
defends it. He says Greece built it to divert people towards
official crossings where they could apply for asylum.
Much of Greece's frontier with Turkey is delineated by a
fast-flowing river, the Evros. But there is a 12 km stretch where
people used to sneak through on land after making the river crossing
in Turkey.
"The Evros river is a very dangerous river," Avramopoulos told
Reuters in his upper floor office suite in February. "Hundreds of
people had lost their lives there."
At least 19 people drowned in the Evros in 2010, according to the
United Nations refugee agency. Neither the Greek authorities nor
Europe's border agency Frontex could provide more data.
In practice, rights groups say Greece's barrier – and others
including one built by Spain in Morocco – effectively turn everyone
away, denying vulnerable people a chance to make their case for
protection.
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This is partly because some new barriers have passport controls like
those at an airport. People need travel documents to exit one
country and reach the checkpoint of the EU country where they want
to seek asylum. Many refugees don't have any papers, so they are
automatically blocked.
With barriers come security guards, cameras and surveillance
equipment, which all make it harder for people to make their asylum
cases. Rights groups have documented many reports of border
officials beating, abusing, or robbing migrants and refugees before
dumping them back where they came from. This approach, known as
push-back, has become an intrinsic feature of Europe's external
borders, according to Amnesty International.
As a solution, some migrants and refugees buy fake papers. Others
stow away in vehicles. Or they turn to people-smugglers.
Greece's fence had a knock-on effect that continues to ripple
through Europe as more countries wall themselves off. More migrants
moving through Turkey began to enter Europe across the Bulgarian
border, or by sailing to Greece in inflatable dinghies. In the
eastern Mediterranean, the International Organization for Migration
has recorded more than 1,100 migrant deaths since the start of last
year.
CULTURAL PURITY
The EU refuses to fund fences, saying they don't work. As European
Commissioner, Avramopoulos has tried instead to persuade fellow
member states to show solidarity by offering homes to 160,000
refugees and migrants, mainly from Greece and Italy. As of March 15,
just 937 asylum applicants had been relocated.
For Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the idea of quotas is
"bordering on insanity." Orban opposes a dilution of Europe's
"Christian values" by multicultural immigrants and started building
fences along Hungary's borders with Croatia and Serbia in late 2015.
Since the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia,
Balkan states have been particularly sensitive to the risks of
ethnic and religious conflict. Other countries followed Hungary with
fences – even if most said they installed them to control the flow
of people, rather than to preserve cultural purity.
When Austria started a barrier on its border with Slovenia in
November 2015, it said it was necessary for crowd management. Then
Austria capped the numbers of people it would admit, and how many it
would allow through to Germany. By March, all these measures seemed
to be having the desired effect: The number of migrants entering
Germany from Austria had fallen more than sevenfold.
Even so, there were new signs the fences were simply reshaping,
rather than closing, the migration routes. The numbers making the
perilous crossing from Africa to Italy had increased. Austria said
it would add soldiers to defend its border with Italy.
The fence Avramopoulos visited last month underlines the risks of
such barriers. Built by Macedonia as part of a pact with states
further north, it has sealed around 50,000 people into Greece.
More than 10,000 – a third of them children – are camped in flimsy
tents near the fence. Many families have refused to leave the
border, waiting instead for it to open, as respiratory infections
spread and frustration mounts.
"All our values are in danger today," Avramopoulos said. "You can
see it here."
(Ledwith reported from London; Additional reporting by Alastair
Macdonald in Brussels, Renee Maltezou in Athens, Tom Miles in Geneva
and Himanshu Ojha in London; Edited by Janet Roberts and Simon
Robinson)
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