The Greek government has decided to extend the border wall with Turkey so that the fence will cover the entire length of the land frontier with the hostile Islamist-led country.
Greece’s national security council agreed to increase the length of the border wall, located in the Evros region, and patrols along the border will also be increased to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing into the country.
Migration and Asylum Minister Notis Mitarakis, who had previously announced that the Evros border wall would be increased by around 50 miles, was present at the national security council meeting, newspaper Ekathimerini reports.
“We can’t talk about a closed Europe, but neither can we have a Europe where traffickers decide who can enter,” Mitarakis said after announcing the extension of the border wall.
The comments echo those made by Mitarakis in July, when the minister stated that the government would not allow a repeat of the 2015 migrant crisis.
“The right of each [European Union] member-state to protect its borders is clear and this means not allowing illegal entries either at land or sea borders, and this is what we do on the Evros border and at sea; this is a given and we will continue to do so,” he said.
“We are not going to become an entry gate again for hundreds of thousands of people who try to pass through Greece to get to other countries of the European Union. There is a great moral dilemma. You cannot allow the smuggling rings to choose who comes to Europe,” Mitarakis insisted.
According to the minister, around 1,500 to 1,700 illegal crossing attempts are made daily, and since the start of the year around 7,900 migrants have illegally entered Greece, with over 1,100 arriving in the month of August alone.
Earlier this year the Greek government claimed that as many as 40,000 migrants had attempted to cross the border illegally in the first four months of the year before being stopped by Greek border police.
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