Debate: Situation in Belarus and at its border with the EU and the security and humanitarian consequences
Date: TUESDAY, 23 NOVEMBER 2021
Speaker: Margaritis Schinas
Language: EN

Over 40 000 repeated attempts to cross the eastern borders into the European Union were prevented this year alone, and there are now over 2 000 people close to the border with an estimated further 15 000 stranded in Belarus. The shocking images of these thousands of desperate people do not do justice to our values. These people are being sold a lie, a fantasy, an illusion of a quick flight through Istanbul or Dubai, through Minsk, to Germany or Central Europe. It is not as simple as it sounds. They do not buy a ticket to Europe. They buy a ticket to an ice—cold forest like so many pawns in a sick game.  Belarus’s actions represent a real and present threat to border control and security. We have to call a spade a spade and see these actions for what they are: a determined attempt to create a continuing and protracted crisis as part of a broader, coordinated effort to destabilise the European Union, testing our unity and resolve. This is not a migration crisis. This is not a migration issue. This is a major security threat. Poland’s borders are being tested, as are Lithuania’s borders and Latvia’s, but these are European borders and the threat to one is a threat to all. We shall not accept it. We shall not tolerate it.  Our response was unrelenting, but I don’t think that now is the time for more diagnostics. Now it’s time for action. Let me take you quickly through the main strands of our European collective response. First and foremost, we are now working to address the dramatic humanitarian crisis unfolding in the forest. We have already mobilised EUR 700 000 of humanitarian funding from the EU budget to support partners in providing immediate assistance to vulnerable people. We have already allocated EUR 200 000 to the Red Cross as part of our overall contribution to the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund, and we are very pleased to see the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UNHCR finally being granted access to a makeshift camp on the Belarusian side of the border, near the international crossing point Bruzgi, to deliver emergency aid and assistance to vulnerable people. But I cannot stress enough how important it is to ensure sustained access for humanitarian actors on both sides of the border. I would also like to remind you that Belarus bears the primary responsibility for addressing this crisis. Belarus is bound by the Geneva Convention, including the principle of non—refoulement, and therefore Belarus must provide for adequate protection of the refugees it invited into its territories and cooperate fully with UNHCR.  Secondly, we are providing immediate and full support to the most affected Member States. We are providing material support through our Civil Protection Mechanism. We are deploying EU agencies – more than 100 Frontex officers operating in Lithuania, 73 EASO experts, two Europol guest officers and one analyst – all deployed on the Lithuanian side of the border. We are mobilising important additional funds. The President has just announced the tripling of our support – elevating it to EUR 238 million – for Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. In addition, we are now working, beyond money and support, on a proposal for provisional measures to be taken in the area of asylum and return, based on Article 78(3) of the Treaty, in response to the call we received from the October European Council. For the longer term, our forthcoming proposals to reform the Schengen Borders Code will strengthen our legal framework and give better tools to Member States to protect their external borders in situations of extreme instrumentalisation.  Thirdly, we are responding to Belarus’s flouting of international norms with a harsh set of sanctions that we continue to escalate. The now fifth set of sanctions were adopted on 15 November and they allow us to target individuals and entities organising or contributing to activities that facilitate illegal crossings, and we are ready to go further, if and when needed, including through the International Civil Aviation Organization. Beyond the money, beyond the humanitarian effort, beyond the help to our Member States and the ceiling of actions, diplomatic efforts and external action on the ground are now paying dividends. I am very proud of everything we have managed to achieve in these last days as Team Europe. Joint demarches have been made by the EU delegations in all countries of origin and transit. I have personally travelled, in less than seven days, to Iraq, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, and tomorrow I will fly to Uzbekistan. I think that, as a result of these on—site visits, the transit routes that are being used by smugglers to bring migrants to the Belarusian border are being shut down one by one. Flights from Baghdad and routed through Dubai, Beirut, Istanbul, Damascus and Tashkent have all been halted. Europe has been counting its friends in these difficult moments and I’m very pleased to have found many. We are making clear that there are no loopholes to exploit in the partnerships we maintain worldwide. Finally, returns are now becoming a major priority. To alleviate the situation at the border, we are working to step up returns. In Baghdad, last Monday and last Thursday, a flight with 432 Iraqis on board left Minsk for Baghdad, and 600 people were returned during the summer. The Iraqi authorities have now officially requested help with such voluntary returns and we are fully committed to providing this. We will mobilise additional funds of around EUR 1 million to support voluntary return and reintegration, in cooperation with the IOM. Altogether, we will provide up to EUR 3.5 million for this purpose. We need to ensure that the funding programming we are in the process of finalising, not just for Iraq but other countries of origin, will leave sufficient financial space for such an operation. It is also important that we continue work to debunk and publicly expose the organised disinformation and the manipulation of information by Belarusian and Russian state—controlled media to inform would—be migrants of the realities that they would face. Today, having mobilised all of these tools, the College decided to add one further tool to our toolbox. When President von der Leyen, from the White House, announced the possibility of sanctions to third-country operators engaged in human smuggling, this was not an empty threat. It was a credible threat. Today, the Commission has proposed a new legal framework which will enable us to adopt targeted measures against transport operators of any mode of transport – land, air, sea, inland waterways – that, knowingly or unknowingly, engage or facilitate smuggling or trafficking people into the European Union. These measures could include the limitation of operations in the Union market, the suspension of licences or authorisations, the prohibition to transit or even overfly the European Union, and to make technical stops or calls into EU ports. This will be a new, powerful tool, and I think that those who consider engaging in such activities will take this message very clearly.  Let me conclude with the two main lessons learned from this extraordinary crisis we have been facing in the last ten days. The first lesson learned is that, as I said a few minutes ago, when we act together as Team Europe, we are unstoppable. Nobody can stop the combined power of immediate reaction when we act, as institutions and Member States, together with our international friends and partners.  Lesson number two: we are much more effective in these circumstances when we deploy tools and instruments grounded in EU law. Diplomatic demarches, protocols and papers flying around do not serve the purpose of defending the European Union in extraordinary times. If we need, want and aspire to be a geopolitical Commission, we need to work together with the full force of EU law and EU instruments. This is when we matter in this troubled, unsafe and obscure world.