Original article (in Croatian) was published on 11/11/2023; Author: Anja Vladisavljević
SDP and HDZ exchange accusations and present different interpretations regarding the “wire vote” in the European Parliament.
“You now have a situation where Andrej Plenkovic is boasting that he will not put wire on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and his representatives in the European Parliament just six months ago voted for the amendment to put a wire on the external borders of the EU. On the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even Zeljana Zovko, who is from BiH, was in favour of that amendment”, said former Minister of the Interior Ranko Ostojic, who was a guest of Tocka na tjedan on N1 television on Sunday.
He said this at a time when the debate on the issue of migration is heating up again in the domestic and European political arena, partly fueled by the fear of terrorist attacks, and the situation in the Middle East, but also by the monitoring of irregular entries into the country. In recent weeks, Croatian politicians from the right-wing opposition have proposed various solutions to stop migrants and refugees from entering Croatian territory through irregular means. The representative of Most, Miro Bulj, announces that he will organize a civil guard on the border and self-protection against illegal migrants, and he proposes, like the rest of his party colleagues, to send the army along the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. The politicians of the Homeland Movement were on a similar track, who think that the army should help the police at the borders, and are against the construction of camps for migrants.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic opposed such proposals. “There is no army at the borders, Croatia is not at war. More than 6,000 policemen protect the border, ignore their ideas”, he said in September, reacting to Most’s idea.
Also, since he became prime minister, he has persistently repeated that Croatia will never introduce wire on its borders, that is, on the external borders of the European Union (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). More recently, he repeated this last month when he submitted the annual report on the Government’s work to the Croatian Parliament, while the opposition noisily interrupted him by banging on the benches.
“In the circumstances of migration pressures, we are especially grateful to the Croatian police officers who guard the state border every day, as well as the external Schengen border of the Union. Thanks to their involvement, a much larger number of illegal crossings was prevented. In this context, Croatia opposes the construction of wire and fences that are not effective, but it is necessary to strengthen cooperation between member states, show solidarity and solve the problem at the source”, said Plenkovic amid the noise.
Tomislav Sokol calls out the SDP over the same amendment
Former minister Ostojic, appearing on N1 television, contrasted Plenkovic’s position claiming that half a year ago they voted to install a wire on the Croatian border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. In that interview, he did not explain what exactly was voted on, that is, which document and which procedure was in question.
More details were given by HDZ MEP Tomislav Sokol, who gave a statement from Brussels on Wednesday to Dnevnik N1 television, when the journalist asked him to comment on the claim of the former SDP minister.
“The amendment we voted for should be read. There is no mention of a wire border anywhere. Investment in strengthening the infrastructure at the external border is mentioned. These are thermal imaging cameras, drones, possibly helicopters, police equipment and so on. The wire is not mentioned anywhere. The wire does not work, it is not efficient. Hungary has a wire, so you have more migrants entering Hungary than Croatia. The wire has not proven to be an effective tool and organized networks of people smugglers will cut that wire very easily”, said Sokol.
He also called out the SDP because by voting “against” he was not in favour of stronger funding of the border police.
The EPP amendment does not directly mention putting “a wire”
It was actually about the Report on general guidelines for the preparation of the EU budget for 2024. The European People’s Party (EPP), to which the HDZ MEPs also belong, proposed changing those guidelines. An amendment to the Report was proposed by Janusz Lewandowski, a Polish representative of the Citizens’ Platform party (in the European Parliament, he belongs to the People’s Group), asking to include a point about the European Union’s investment in infrastructure at its external borders. The EPP’s amendment was very similar to the conclusions adopted by the EU Council in February at the summit in Brussels. In that text, significant EU funds were promised to strengthen cameras and staff at its borders, but without mentioning direct funding for the construction of walls or fences.
Originally, in the Report on general guidelines for the preparation of the EU budget for 2024, it was stated that the European Parliament is “expressly concerned about the way certain member states interpret the conclusions of the European Council from February 9, 2023, and especially the paragraph 23”. This paragraph concerns border control and according to it the European Union is “determined to ensure effective control of its external land and sea borders”.
The original report also stated that “the EU budgetary authority is strongly opposed to the use of any financial resources of the Union for the construction of fences or walls at the external borders of the Union and expects that the Commission will deny any funds for this purpose now and in the future”. Instead of that formulation, according to which the EU explicitly opposes the construction of fences and walls, a new, essentially different one was proposed.
The amendments proposed by Lewandowski welcome the conclusions of the European Council of February 9, 2023, and in particular their paragraph 23, “which calls on the Commission to immediately mobilize substantial financial and other EU resources to support Member States in strengthening capacity and infrastructure for the protection of borders, means of surveillance, including aerial surveillance, and equipment”.
This amendment was adopted with a slight difference: 322 for and 290 against.
As the spokesperson of the Croatian EPP representatives told Faktograf, “all HDZ representatives supported the amendment, which in content follows the Council’s conclusions from February 2023, while all SDP representatives expressly voted against the mobilization of European funds to support member states including Croatia, in strengthening capacities and infrastructure for border protection and means of surveillance”.
SDP MEP Predrag Fred Matic told Faktograf that it is true that all MEPs from his party voted against the amendment. As he explained, they understood it – since it is very general and imprecisely formulated – as a green light for financing physical barriers on the external borders of the European Union, including the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to him, infrastructure for border protection can mean anything, even a wire, which Plenkovic expressly opposed. “To put it simply, money from the European Union raises the bar”, claims Matic.
Rhetorical clashes between two political rivals regarding the vote about the wire also appeared earlier this year, immediately after the vote itself.
On April 19, HDZ MEP Karlo Ressler called out the Croatian Social Democrats on his Twitter profile (today X) for voting against the amendment, and once “again putting cheap ideological whims before the security of the Croatian border and territory”.
Matic soon responded, telling his HDZ colleagues that the announcement was “hypocritical”.
“In fact, they accuse the SDP for not voting for the wire to be financed with EU money, while they voted for it to be done and once again stabbed Plenkovic in the back, who recently said that there would be no wire to BiH”, Matic said on that occasion for Hina.
Then the HDZ reacted again. In a press release published on April 21, 2023, they wrote that SDP members “lied on the official Twitter account that HDZ voted for a wire on the external border of the EU”. They added that wire is not mentioned anywhere in the document, and Ressler stated that “we can guard the border without wire precisely thanks to EU funds that are invested in modern equipment”.
Indeed, the amendment does not mention a wire, that is, it does not specify any specific means to “strengthen the capacity and infrastructure for border protection”, but it does not explicitly mention the drones, thermal imaging cameras or helicopters that Sokol mentioned.
“The EPP believes that the EU should finance these fences”
However, the EPP does not hide that for them physical barriers, such as fences, are one of the border protection options. When they announced that the border infrastructure funding amendment had passed, their representative, Jeroen Lenaers, said that there is no migration policy without border protection and control. “It’s that simple. If we want to be in solidarity, then we must establish order on our borders, if necessary by putting fences where necessary”, he declared.
Also, before the actual vote on the aforementioned amendment, EPP President Manfred Weber, in an interview with the Italian Corriere della Sera, published on April 17, 2023, did not rule out the possibility of putting fences on the borders of the EU. “Walls should be the exception, the last response, but if it is not possible to stop illegal immigration in any other way, then you have to be prepared to build fences as well”. All countries with an external border raised it: Greece with Turkey, Poland and Lithuania with Belarus, Finland with Russia when the government was still socialist, and Spain in Ceuta and Melilla. The EPP believes that the EU should finance these fences because it is not about the protection of national, but European borders”, Weber replied to an Italian journalist who asked him why they wanted the EU to finance border barriers.
Social Democrats in the EP against “ the fortress Europe”
The Social Democrats (S&D) in the European Parliament considered that amendment controversial. On April 19, 2023, they announced that their group rejected the attempt of right-wing parliamentary clubs to insert a text into the European budget proposal that enables the construction of walls and fences with European money.
“With so many problems in our neighbourhood, we need to find adequate solutions to face the current challenges. This means supporting countries on the front lines with humane and effective solutions to protect our external borders. The real answer to the challenge lies in the rapid implementation of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. Instead of turning the EU into a ‘Fortress Europe’ by building walls that cannot protect anyone, we should use our budget to support our Union and neighbouring countries in finding appropriate solutions to face the current challenges”, said Victor Negrescu from S&D.
It should be emphasized that even though the EPP amendment on the introduction of “substantial financial and other EU resources to support member states in strengthening border protection capacities and infrastructure, surveillance assets, including aerial surveillance, and equipment” was adopted by a narrow majority, the entire report on general guidelines for the preparation of the budget for 2024 was not voted on at that time.
There are over 2,000 kilometres of border barriers in Europe
The European Commission has repeatedly opposed requests to use EU funds to build fences on the border (1, 2), although such ideas have appeared before. For example, in 2017, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán asked the EU to reimburse half of the costs (about 400 million euros) for the fence that the country built to prevent illegal migration.
Physical barriers at the external borders of the European Union, but also within the bloc itself, began to be set up more intensively after 2014/2015, when the so-called migrant crisis was at its peak and when more than a million people passed through the “Balkan route” to the countries of Western Europe. According to data from the European Parliament’s Internal Research Service (EPRS), between 2014 and 2022 the total length of border fences at the external borders of the EU and within the EU/Schengen area increased from 315 to 2,048 kilometres. By 2022, around 13 percent of the EU’s external land borders were fenced off.
Back in 2012, Greece built a 12.5-kilometre fence on the border with Turkey in the Evros River valley, and another fence on that border was completed in 2021. As Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced this spring, “with or without the EU’s help”, he will continue to build the fence along that stretch.
In 2015, North Macedonia built several fences along the border with Greece.
In 2014, Bulgaria installed razor wire along its border with Turkey and gradually upgraded it until 2017, reaching a length of 235 kilometres.
In 2021, Poland set a 186-kilometre steel wall along the border with Belarus. Border barriers also exist in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Spain and France.
Our neighbouring country, Hungary, built 158 kilometres of fence on the border with Serbia and 131 on the border with Croatia between 2015 and 2017, according to the EPRS report.
In 2015, Austria built a 3.7-kilometer-long border barrier near Spielfeld, one of the busiest border crossings with Slovenia.
Between 2015 and 2020, Slovenia installed almost 200 kilometres of wire on the border with Croatia. Last year, it started dismantling the fence. As early as 2015, official Zagreb demanded from Ljubljana the removal of razor wire from all parts of the state territory of the Republic of Croatia, and activists from both countries jointly protested against the wire on the border. Even the local population in the border area was not satisfied with this solution. In the same way, the deaths of animals that got entangled in the wire were recorded, both on the Slovenian and Hungarian sides.
Croatian politicians shy away from the wire on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina
Although the Croatian Prime Minister has constantly emphasized that Croatia will not raise a wire on its borders, the Croatian border regime has been criticized for years due to police violence against migrants and refugees, which was documented by numerous domestic and international organizations, as well as journalistic investigations (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
While in some members of the European Union, there is a clearer dividing line between opponents and advocates of physical barriers at the border, because the opponents mostly emphasize the inhumanity of such an approach, in Croatia the issue is further politicized. Given that Croatia shares a 1,011-kilometer border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that at the same time Croats, who make up one of the three constituent nations, live in that country, politicians, regardless of the political spectrum to which they belong, have for years shied away from the idea that these two countries be separated by a wire.
The discussion about the wire on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina moved to the Croatian Parliament, where on Thursday the Minister of the Interior, Davor Boznovic, submitted a report on the state of illegal migration since Croatia’s entry into the Schengen area.