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K. Mitsotakis: The protection of external borders is a common European obligation

Europe is facing the consequences of a new hybrid threat: the instrumentalization of migrants as a means of exerting political pressure. Every day thousands of migrants try to enter the EU through Belarus. Many of them stop at the border and set up makeshift camps themselves to protect themselves from the cold as border guards watch them behind barbed wire fences. They are not trying to escape a war in a neighboring country. They were invited with false promises, arrived there by plane, picked them up and transported by bus to the border with Poland, from Minsk National Airport.

This drama unfolds on the basis of a carefully orchestrated script, which aims to use these people as a tool of hybrid destabilization. It is designed to pressure and divide the EU’s democratic nations to retreat against Alexander Lukashenko. The latter is convinced that he can use human suffering to force Europe to abandon the imposition of new sanctions on his regime. We can not accept the imposition of this strategy, neither now nor in the future.

President Lukashenko draws inspiration from a strategy that has already been tried and which has sown chaos and misery on Europe’s borders. In March 2020, tens of thousands of undocumented people arrived en masse at the land border between Turkey and Greece. Then – as now – men, women and children were instrumentalized by an aggressive neighbor who seeks results that are contrary to the values ​​and principles of Europe.

Europe must not back down and must say “enough”. The instrumentalization of migrants will be used again and again to the detriment of Europe as long as EU countries do not take the necessary steps to address two key weaknesses: the lack of a fair, coherent, effective and stable European policy. And the lack of effective action to combat the phenomenon of trafficking in human beings under the guidance of either criminals or third country governments.

If these fundamental issues are not resolved, all EU member states located outside its borders – such as Greece or Poland – risk facing the same pressure in the coming years. The next target of such an attack could be Romania, Bulgaria or even Finland or Estonia.

The nations guarding the EU’s borders cannot be left alone to tackle this problem. An active response presupposes solidarity among all EU Member States and at the same time a stronger foreign policy response that will include sanctions against countries that use people for hybrid attacks.

While the actions of the European Commission are oriented in the right direction, in addition to ad-hoc solutions, we must put in place stable mechanisms, with duration, which will prevent the recurrence of similar situations in the future. Protecting the EU ‘s external borders, by all means available, is not the sole responsibility of national authorities. It is a common European obligation that underlies our common security.

Greece has strengthened its ongoing actions, together with European and neighboring countries, to manage migration in the most humane, legal and constructive way. We operate exclusively under European law and while we are actively protecting Europe’s borders, we have also issued thousands of professional visas in the last year and processed many asylum applications. Recently, Greece safely evacuated and now hosts, for purely humanitarian reasons, 700 vulnerable Afghans: women MPs, judges, intellectuals as well as their families, whose lives were in danger.

However, on a daily basis, the risky attempts to enter Europe by boat continue, which are made with the support of traffickers’ networks. This – like the situation in Belarus – must stop. Those who oppose our border protection measures should think, even for a second, that they may be playing the game of those who care much less about human lives and much more about political power.

Our country, and I personally, will continue to deal constructively with the issue of immigration, and we are ready to support our partners today, as they supported us when we faced the crisis in Evros. We will continue to do everything possible to continue to save human lives. But we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that immigration has become a tool for regimes like Belarus. Europe must soon find a response to this new hybrid threat to protect both the stability of our societies and the human victims of such schemes.

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Source From: Capital

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