Quelle: The Guardian

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán wants to fence Greece off from Europe, but analysts say this will not reduce the flow of people

In metaphorical terms, the migration crisis has driven Greece to the wall, with more than 850,000 asylum seekers landing on its shores in 2015. This year, the expression may take on a more literal meaning, depending on whether you believe the bluster of rightwing European leaders.

In recent days, Hungary’s hardline prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has called for Greece to be walled off from the rest of Europe – or at least from Macedonia, the next step along the migration trail towards Germany. Orbán wants the EU to expand an existing fence around the Greek border town of Idomeni along the entire length of the Greece-Macedonia border, just as Hungary walled off its own border in September.

The proposal is understood to have been among a raft of ideas discussed at the latest top-level migration meeting between European politicians on Monday.

Some Brussels insiders view the suggestion as unworkable. “I don’t think it’s conceivable,” said Gerald Knaus, a former diplomat and the chairman of the European Stability Initiative, an influential European thinktank.

Which is just as well, since migration experts doubt that more walls will stop the flow of refugees to Europe. For a start, it will take time to change the group-think of asylum seekers still intent on using the Greek islands to reach Europe. And even if numbers are reduced by as much as 80%, the level would still be higher than the then record highs of 2014.

There is a chance that desperate people would simply find other ways into Europe, said John Dalhuisen, the Europe director for Amnesty International. “An extension of the fence along the Greek border won’t reduce a net flow into Europe in the long run,” he said.

“Other routes will be found. Every single time Europe has erected a fence or strengthened its maritime border, people have taken other routes, despite the increased expense and danger.” His comments refer to past attempts to seal Europe’s borders with Morocco, Libya and countries on the west coast of Africa.

In Greece, alternative routes are close at hand. Refugees will likely find new ways through Albania to Macedonia’s west and Bulgaria and Romania to the east. Some have already started using these alternatives. Since November, migrants from countries other than Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have been turned back from the Macedonian border, and blocked from accessing a humanitarian corridor to Germany that has been in place since August.

Undeterred, many have simply turned to smugglers to find them alternative ways through the Balkans. An expanded Macedonian fence will likely speed up this process, returning matters to how they were prior to last summer, when thousands were smuggled towards Germany despite the absence of the humanitarian corridor.

Knaus said: “In the end, people will still get through. Anyone already in Greece will not turn back to Turkey.”

Behind the scenes, Knaus is pushing for an entirely different solution – the mass resettlement of refugees directly from Turkey. It is impossible, he points out, to stop people reaching the Greek islands from Turkey. Once in Greece, it will also be hard to contain them – and even if it were possible, Greece does not have the resources to care for them.

The only way out is to persuade Turkey to take back asylum seekers who reach Greece by boat, and as a quid pro quo, for Germany to formally resettle hundreds of thousands of refugees directly from Turkey. This would not prevent refugees from reaching Europe. But it would allow the continent to manage their arrivals better, decide who comes and when, and know who they are before they arrive.

To continue the metaphor, trying to stop their passage entirely would be like banging one’s head against a wall.

“I’m convinced that a lot of people just don’t understand the basic issues,” Knaus said. “Whatever they say, you can’t close the Aegean [maritime] border.”