‘The price of bunker Europe’

“Illegal entry into the European fortress has an increasingly significant financial and human cost. As does the act of rejecting applicants for immigration, who put their lives in their hands in this journey” Libération writes. The French daily has teamed up with The Migrants' Files (TMF), a collective that has researched into the money spent since 2000 by the EU to tackle illegal immigration and by migrants to arrive in Europe.

TMF claims that migrant have spent no less than 16 billion euros during this period, while “*states have been financing new technologies to detect migrants, investing in the construction of ever higher walls and multiplying costly expulsion procedures. In total, the EU's 28 member states have spent more than 13 billion euros, 11.3 just on expulsions.

It is in this context that Hungary decided to close its border with Serbia on 17 June. The border was a heavily used passage into the EU by migrants travelling across the former Yugoslavia. Hungary plans to build a four metre high wall across 175 kilometres, which Népszabadság estimates will cost 22 billion forints, or 70 million euros. The announcement was met by indignation from the Serbian government. Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić said, “Serbia will not let itself be sealed out. We will not be another Auschwitz.”