Luxembourgs Prime Minister Calls EUs Sponsorship Of Border Fences Shame For Bloc

It is a "shame" for the European Union to sponsor border fences to tackle irregular migration because the bloc's efforts should focus on taking away walls and building peace instead, Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said on Wednesday.

"We have to see how we can find solutions not see everything as a danger, and to have walls or fences sponsored by the European Union would be a shame. As I told you before, for me, the European Union must take away walls to have peace and not to build walls and trying to be divided," Bettel told a joint press conference with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola in France's Strasbourg.

The comment comes on the wake of Poland's decision to start construction of the European Union's most secure electronic barrier on the border with Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.

On Tuesday, the Polish Border Guard said that the electronic barrier would be 200 kilometers (124 miles) long and that the construction works would be finished by September 30, 2023.

Last year, Polish officials said that the country was building barriers on the border with the Russian region of Kaliningrad to prevent a migrant crisis similar to the one that arose on the border with Belarus in 2021.

In February, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer called for an erection of walls and barriers along the external border of the European Union to fight illegal migration.