The European Council on Foreign Relations

Sofia View: Of Fences and Neighbours

Date: 24th January 2011  |  Author: Dimitar Bechev,

Categories: Wider Europe, Sofia view,
Tags: , greece, schengen, turkey, balkans, bulgaria

They say good fences make good neighbours, and certainly fences are never out of fashion in the Balkans. Especially when the perennial bane of European integration, foot and mouth disease, strikes.  The Bulgarian Ministry of Agriculture is now mulling the installation of a fence along a section of the 143 km-long boundary with Turkey to stamp out the spread of an epidemic.  In an ironic twist, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is now bringing back a Cold War relic! This border used to be fenced – until the post-1989 rapprochement between Bulgaria and its one-time NATO adversary Turkey. 

European solidarity means harder borders. A case in point: Greece’s plans to build a wall on a 19km stretch of land in the Greek province of Thrace, some 50km south from Bulgarian territory.  Sources in Athens claim that more than 100,000 illegal immigrants have crossed into EU’s confines from Turkey since early 2010, with a small enclave on the right bank of river Evros/Meric/Maritsa near the Greek frontier town of Orestiada as the principal gateway. Despite the best efforts of FRONTEX,Greece is now seen as the weakest point on the edges of Schengenland. Turkey’s government is willy-nilly consenting, despite the not-so-bright associations that fences provoke.  But while George Papandreou and Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas got the blessings of Erdoğan and Davutoğlu at a recent meeting in Erzurum, a city in Eastern Turkey, border authorities on both sides look at one another with distrust. On the Greek side, they blame Turkey’s policy of extending visa-free travel to neighbours in the Middle East, with Yemen being the latest country in Ankara’s list. Yet another story of newly discovered Greek-Turkish friendship hitting the limits.

There is a deficit of trust in the EU that Bulgaria can properly police its borders with Turkey either. The Greek precedent weighs heavily across the Union. The technical team despatched from Brussels in December came up with a report that was critical of Bulgaria’s level of preparedness. Add the recent negative views on Bulgaria and Romania coming from the ministries of the interior in Berlin and Paris, and it becomes certain that Schengen accession is now sure to be deferred beyond the target date of March 2011.

The morale of the story: multi-layered (if not multiple-speed) Europe is now a reality. The division between a “core” and a “periphery” is a theme that goes well beyond the eurozone’s current travails and is valid for a bunch of other policy areas.  No better symbol to convey that than the odd fence in a faraway corner of the EU.

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