Several EU interior ministers gathered on Friday (21 January) to discuss how to step up the protection of EU external borders but failed to agree on a common approach, with options ranging from building fences at the borders to strengthening Schengen and migration legislation.
On Friday, an international conference in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius brought together European Commission officials and interior ministers from a number of EU countries in an attempt to draw lessons from the latest migrant crisis on the EU’s border with Belarus, which started last year.
“The current situation at the border seems to be much more stable than a couple of weeks or a couple of months ago,” Rustamas Liubajevas, commander of Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service, told reporters while standing at a recently built border fence at the Lithuanian – Belarus border.
Ylva Johansson, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, added that Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko ”seems to have lost his interest in using migrants in an instrumentalised way”.
However, EU leaders and commission representatives highlighted the need to step up the protection of the EU’s external borders.
“It’s time to talk about the lessons learned,” Johansson said.
“Based on the idea to move freely inside the Schengen area, we must ensure the security of our citizens,” Johansson said, stressing that for this, a “secure external border” is needed.
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