In six years, it has failed to come up with a common and effective response to the migrant problem. He pledged that his administration would persuade the migrants to return home, while pretending to be surprised by their reluctance.įinally, the EU is showing its institutional impotence. Fearing further sanctions, Lukashenko changed his attitude on 15 November. The 27 EU countries were right to refuse to be blackmailed and to brandish sanctions against the airlines that would continue to engage in this traffic.
He did not do so in order to blackmail the EU into recognising his regime – one born out of dubious elections. The Belarusian dictator could very well have stopped the flow of young Middle Eastern men to his country as early as August 2021, when the traffickers’ scheme had become clear. Belarusian police officers even led some Middle Eastern migrants to the Polish border. Since the summer of 2021, we have seen Lukashenko’s Belarus show incredible leniency to human trafficking rings, which had identified his country as an ideal base for illegal immigration to the EU. Equipped with battering rams, these young men attacked the barriers marking the EU’s external border, shouting ‘Yunanistan’, which is the Turkish name for Greece.
Turkish security forces brought thousands of migrants in buses to Greek border crossings. In February 2020, Erdogan’s Turkey, angered by the West’s lack of support after the loss of 33 of its soldiers in Syria, and eager to get more money from the EU, made good on its threat to open the floodgates to migration. Second, the EU is the only organisation in the world that is so openly blackmailed by states. They have become masters in the art of soliciting the help of NGOs in the Mediterranean, which have become the useful idiots of human trafficking. In North Africa and the Sahel, these networks are also involved in drug trafficking. Nowhere else in the world is there such a lax border and such tolerance of criminal human trafficking networks. Since Angela Merkel’s unilateral decision to open Germany’s borders wide in September 2015 – only to close them again a month later – resourceful young men with a good network of smugglers have claimed the right to settle in the European Union.
Sturdy young men can be seen attacking Polish border fences with shears and pickaxes with impunity. It is as if European law has a natural vocation to be trampled on. Regulations that provide for strict procedures for labour immigration, or for obtaining political refugee status. Why are the images of Middle Eastern migrants trying to force their way into Poland from Belarus so disturbing to us? Are they indicative of a triple impotence of the European Union (EU)?įirst, no one seems to respect EU regulations on non-European immigration.