On Tuesday 3 December, the members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties questioned the Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council and the European Commission on the situation at the EU’s eastern borders, in particular the borders between Poland and Belarus, and on future action in response to the instrumentalisation of migration.
In 2024, according to Frontex, the EU’s eastern land borders saw a 195% increase compared with the previous year, with 15,234 irregular crossings. On the border between Poland and Belarus, the increase was 66%, with 8,000 arrivals, while the situation stabilised between Finland and Russia.
According to Beate Gminder, Director General of DG HOME, 90% of the people crossing the border between Belarus and Poland had Russian visas.
When asked about the actions of the new Commissioner in charge of these issues, Magnus Brunner, the Director General simply indicated that the Commission would be reflecting on the new actions to be taken to give the Member States all the necessary tools.
But she again ruled out the possibility of using European funds to finance walls at external borders.
Questioned on this subject by Estonian MEP Marina Kaljurand (S&D), who pointed to the persistence of cases of the instrumentalisation of migrants for more than three years and the EU’s inaction against Moscow and Minsk, the Director General said that the Commission was concentrating on the added value of the funds and that “there will not be enough European funds for all the requests”.
Aid from the European budget should “be concentrated where it is most useful”, for example on technical border surveillance equipment, she added.
When asked about the various national bills being considered or implemented in response to these situations of instrumentalisation, such as in Finland and Poland, she also felt that, at this stage, the Member States concerned had all tried to respond to these issues in a “proportionate” manner.
“There is no easy solution” or “single answer” for these frontline countries in the face of Russian and Belarusian actions.
The Director General also recalled what Member States can currently do under the ‘crises’ regulation of the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’, such as derogating from the rules on deadlines for registering applications for protection or closing border crossing points. However, all this must always be done within the framework of respect for fundamental rights and the principle of non-refoulement, which the Patriots for Europe group, through Fabrice Leggeri (French), felt was in contradiction with what the Member States must do to prevent these arrivals.
Bálint Ódor, Hungary’s Permanent Representative to the EU, believes that the European Council has taken full measure of these hybrid threats. “We hope that the European Parliament will follow suit, because these are serious threats that pose a real domestic threat” and a threat to migrants facing a humanitarian crisis. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)