EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said Thursday (January 26th) that the EU budget does not include subsidizing fences to prevent migrant arrivals, but did not make a principled opposition to it.
“There is no money in the EU budget for this. If we had to spend money on walls or fences, there would be no money for other things”said EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson as she arrived for a meeting of interior ministers in Stockholm.
Asked at a press conference about this request from some of the member countries, the Swedish commissioner described herself as “very pragmatic”. “It’s very easy to say ‘we need money for extra things’. I have the budget that the Council and the Parliament have given me”did she say.
Major interoperability reform
“We have decided to prioritize some necessary things at the external borders, in particular related to the major ongoing reform on interoperability (of information systems on migration and security) and digitization”she said.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer visited the border between Bulgaria and Turkey on Monday, along which a fence has been erected by Sofia to prevent the arrival of migrants. He indicated ” sustain “ Bulgarian President Roumen Radev’s request to the Commission to obtain “two billion euros to extend this fence, in order to provide real protection for the European Union”.
“These are technical equipment, surveillance cameras, drones, helicopters, vehicles (and) the infrastructure itself. Austria is clearly on the side of Bulgaria when it comes to supporting this country in this process.”added the Chancellor, who intends to raise the issue at the next European summit on 9 and 10 February.
Make the border “more robust”
Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner ruled in Stockholm on Thursday “necessary to make the external border (of the EU) more robust, so that we have the possibility to travel safely within the European space”. “I think we are at the start of a discussion that promises to be intense”he commented.
Already in October 2021, twelve EU countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia) had asked Brussels to finance the construction of such fences. The Commission has repeatedly expressed its refusal.
“There is a long-standing joint position of the Commission and the European Parliament (on the fact) that there will be no financing of barbed wire and walls”, had notably affirmed the head of the European executive, Ursula von der Leyen. The President of the European Council Charles Michel had, on the contrary, considered that such financing was “legally possible”.