THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Greece has announced plans to build a controversial new wall along its 128 mile-long land border with Turkey to keep out illegal immigrants.
Christos Papoutsis, a Greek interior minister, insisted the wall was necessary after Brussels intervened last year to prevent an immigration crisis by sending in an elite taskforce of border guards to protect the frontier between Greece and Turkey, the EU’s most insecure boundary. He compared the planned barrier to the 650-mile fence along sections of the United-States-Mexico border.
“Co-operation with other EU states is going well. Now we plan to construct a fence to deal with illegal migration,” he said.
”The Greek public has reached its limit in taking in illegal immigrants. We are absolutely determined on this issue. Greece can’t take it anymore.”
Critics said the planned wall would be viewed as a symbol of widespread opposition, led by France, Germany and Greece, to Turkish EU membership and an emblem of a new Christian-Muslim divide between West and East. >>> Bruno Waterfield, Brussels | Monday, January 03, 2011
