Poland to build a wall on the border with Belarus in December

Poland will begin construction of a wall on its border with Belarus in December, whose works will be completed in the first half of 2022, the interior minister said in a statement on Monday.

It is an “absolutely strategic work and a priority investment for the security of the country and its citizens,” said Minister Mariusz Kaminski.

The official added that the contracts will be signed on December 15 and construction of the border wall will begin at the end of that month. It will work 24 hours a day.

The wall will cost 353 million euros ($ 407 million) and it will have a length of 180 kilometers, more or less half of the common border.

Parliament authorized the construction last month.

Thousands of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have crossed or tried to cross the border between Poland and Belarus since this summer.

Poland has responded to the flow of migrants by sending thousands of soldiers to the border, and implemented the state of emergency there, for which it has received criticism.

EU prepares to sanction Belarus for using migrants

In the meantime, The foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) prepared this Monday the legal ground to be able to impose the first sanctions against a country for “instrumentalizing” migrants in order to exert political pressure, in this case against Belarus, whom he accuses of pushing those people to cross his external borders.

The EU accuses Belarus of deliberately organizing this crisis, encouraging migrantsHe is targeting the European Union with visas and flights, particularly from Iraq, in response to Western sanctions following the brutal crackdown on protests for Lukashenko’s re-election.

According to Belarusian media, German leader Angela Merkel and Aleksander Lukashenko spoke about how to resolve the migration crisis and the German leader stressed the need to offer humanitarian aid to migrants at the border. (I)