ATHENS, Greece (AP) – Greece says it will renew a request for European Union funds in 2022 to extend a border wall along its frontier with Turkey and promised to expand a powerful surveillance network aimed at stopping migrants entering the country illegally.
A public order minister, Takis Theodorikakos, told a parliamentary committee that Greece expects some countries bordering the EU to continue to exploit migration to exert political pressure on member states, citing the recent crisis in Belarus on its border with Poland and other EU members.
“We have every reason to expect that these kinds of threats will continue,” he said during the parliamentary briefing held Friday and made public Monday.
Greece’s center-right government has toughened the country’s migration policy and recently completed a 26-kilometer (16-mile) extension of a steel border wall to make the barrier span 38 kilometers (24 miles).
“We believe the security on our own borders is linked to the security of the EU,” Theodorikakos said, adding that border walls and fences are normally funded by national governments.