Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has asked the EU for financial support for his country’s border wall with Turkey. It is “time that the EU seriously considered providing European funds for this type of project,” Mitsotakis told AFP news agency on Friday on the sidelines of a visit to the steel wall site in Feres, northeastern Greece. The plan is to initially extend the five meter high and currently 37.5 kilometer long barrier on the border river Evros by 35 kilometers.
A possible financing of barriers at the EU’s external borders by the Union is extremely controversial. At the EU summit in February, Austria and Greece, among others, called for EU money for barriers at the external borders. In January, however, EU Interior Commissioner Ylva Johansson emphasized that there were no funds available in the EU budget for financing such projects.
The conservative head of government Mitsotakis, on the other hand, argued to AFP on Friday that his country was making a contribution to European security and also to a more integrated and efficient European asylum policy with the closure of the Evros.
Athens plans to extend the border wall to a total of 100 kilometers by 2026. According to Mitsotakis, the expansion project, which is estimated to cost 100 million, will continue in any case. The wall is “an obstacle erected by the Greek government to protect a country’s borders, which also happen to be the external borders of the European Union”.
Mitsotakis said he was “always firmly convinced that we cannot reach a new agreement on migration and asylum if we do not protect our external borders”. The border wall on the Evros is “an important contribution to this goal”, which is financed “exclusively by the Greek budget, by the Greek taxpayers”.