The construction is launched. He will not rest until the famous anti-migrant wall announced in November by the government is not completed. By the end of June, Warsaw hopes. The workers and their machines will take turns night and day.
→ READ. In Poland, migrants in the trap of the border
Three Polish companies were selected following a call for tenders to raise this palisade 5 meters high and 186 km long. To meet the deadlines, the service providers divided the work into four sections built simultaneously. The whole will rest on some 50,000 steel poles topped with a coil of 50 cm barbed wire and an electronic motion detection system.
Rallyed by the Baltic countries
This construction has a significant cost: 1.6 billion zlotys (350 million euros). And feeds the debates between Europeans on the financing of the walls at the external borders: during a conference on migration management organized in Vilnius (Lithuania), Friday January 21, 16 European countries signed a joint declaration asking Brussels for a “adequate financial support” for the construction “physical infrastructure”.
The three Baltic countries joined Poland in this fight, alongside Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Malta, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The affair took a particularly serious turn in the countries of the former Eastern bloc, when Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus announced joint military maneuvers with Russia at the gates of Europe between the 10th and the February 20.
Without European funds
For the time being, Brussels does not plan to respond positively to them. “If member states want to build fences, they can do it, but the Commission has long since taken the decision not to fund walls or barbed wire”, replied the commissioner in charge of migration, Ylva Johansson. The Swede reminded Lithuania, which has already built its own barrier, as well as Poland that the “refoulements of migrants have no place in the legal system of the European Union”. Asylum applications must be investigated, even if they are rejected by a judge.
→ REPORT. “We must not give in to fear of the stranger”: in Poland, bishops plead for migrants
The creation of the wall, generally supported by public opinion, is meeting with pockets of resistance among NGOs defending the rights of migrants in Poland, but also among certain inhabitants of Podlasie, the bordering region, where petitions are multiplying. In a letter to the commander-in-chief of the border guards and to the main construction company selected for the construction, Budimex, Poles denounce the deleterious climate which has prevailed for several months. The wall is only one element of the surveillance of this border, where some 15,000 soldiers are gathered, mobilized by the state of emergency. “Our house has turned into a militarized zone, crossed by countless cars, combat vehicles, armed troops and helicopters”, they denounce.
Trees, not walls
Others are worried regarding their natural jewel, the primary forest of Białowieża, classified Natura 2000 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. The movement of lynxes, wolves and other bison in this space located between Belarus and Poland might be hampered. Conservationists fear further logging bans across a wide swath.
→ DEBATE. Can walls stop migrants?
Another mobilization launched by local elected officials from the opposition party to the government, the Civic Platform (PO), implores “to interfere as little as possible with nature” while fearing the destruction of this « grand monument national ». The environmental issue might be added to the long list of grievances with the EU, whose justice ordered in 2017 the cessation of tree cutting. The latter had tripled since the ultra-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in Warsaw. But since last October, the Constitutional Court, subservient to the executive power, has decreed the primacy of national law over European judgments.
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From migratory manipulation to military maneuvers
► Since the end of June 2021, Belarus has ended its participation in the “Eastern Partnership” with the European Union, in retaliation for the sanctions imposed once morest the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. Since then, the latter has encouraged the passage of migrants to Poland and Lithuania.
► These tensions took a new turn on January 17, while Russia threatens a new armed conflict in Ukraine: Minsk is considering joint military maneuvers with Moscow between February 10 and 20.
► Entire trains of military equipment were filmed by Internet users during their transfer to Belarus. The arsenal includes two S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, as well as 12 Su-35 combat aircraft.
