A country is sticking to border protection: Lithuania refuses allegiance to the European Court of Justice

The Lithuanian Minister of the Interior is opposed to a new ECJ decision. She wants to continue to reject illegal migration and bring it back to Belarusian territory. A tunnel on the Polish fence shows that provocations by Lukashenko are still to be expected.

The Lithuanian border guard is celebrating its 102nd anniversary this year. In order to understand this number, one must remember the first re-establishment of an independent Lithuania, which broke away from the Russian Empire in 1918. In 1990 this national renaissance was repeated by breaking away from the Soviet Union. Today, Lithuanians no longer want to be without independence from their large neighbors to the east.

The authority of the Strasbourg-Brussels-Luxembourg EU headquarters, on the other hand, is eroding before it can even be established. After the Commission and the EU Parliament, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg has now failed in its attempt to force a member state to obey.

The ECJ ruled last Thursday that those migrants who cross the Belarusian-Lithuanian border must be given the opportunity to apply for asylum. The arrest on Lithuanian territory and subsequent refoulement ("pushback") violates EU law. However, Lithuanian law provides exactly this procedure. In addition, this practice was also approved at a meeting of the EU Council of Interior Ministers, which shows that a consensus has formed among the member states beyond the Commission, Parliament and ECJ, which is reminiscent of the old EC times - before the Brussels Directorate.

UNHCR: Many there are probably not refugees
Lithuanian Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė has now made it clear that her country will continue to prevent migrants from crossing the border from Belarus. The Lithuanian government goes even further: even successful invaders in the Baltic country are arrested and sent back to Belarus. Bilotaitė was not surprised by the Luxembourg decision. She believes that traditional EU migration policies and some of the common legislation do not live up to the challenges of reality - especially when dealing with undemocratic regimes in the immediate vicinity that have exploited migration. Bilotaitė intends to raise the issue in the forthcoming Council of Interior Ministers chaired by the Czech Republic.

Even before the ECJ decision, the human rights NGO Amnesty International had called for an end to the refusals and the release of all migrants by Lithuania. Bilotaitė said this week that Lithuania is facing unfounded criticism for containing the migration crisis. According to the semi-state broadcaster LRT , in the event of a crisis, it would take the same measures as last year.

This decision by the Lithuanian government is highly topical, because the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will not let the Ukraine war distract him from his plan to smuggle illegal migrants to his western and northwestern borders. In mid-June, Polish border guards discovered a tunnel that was apparently intended to bypass the massive border fence that had just been completed. According to the Austrian news website exxpress.at, Belarusian soldiers were caught digging.

Even the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Gillian Triggs has now acknowledged that most border crossers from Belarus are just migrants: "A lot of the people [there] are essentially migrants and probably not refugees." However, Triggs believes that it will be some time before the situation on the Belarusian border returns to normal.

Bilotaitė: We have to be prepared
From last summer and autumn it can be remembered that there were repeated skirmishes at the border, through which the migrants wanted to gain access to mostly Polish territory. Board constructions were systematically thrown onto the barbed wire teeth that still existed at the time, and then walked over them. At the beginning of the summer, Lithuania had already increased the number of people on its border, which was already better fortified at the time, and thus largely diverted the flow of migrants to the Belarusian-Polish border. Before that, about 4,200 migrants entered Lithuania illegally.

At a press conference last Friday, Interior Minister Bilotaitė pointed out that the situation on the Belarusian-Lithuanian border is mostly calm today - certainly also a success of the consistent border protection policy of the Lithuanians and Poles: "Lukashenko's plan to flood the EU with illegal migrants, failed.” This was also shown by findings from social networks. However, there is still the possibility of provocations, for which Lithuania must be prepared.

The beginning of July marked the anniversary of the declaration of the state of emergency in the Lithuanian border region, which continues to exist, which demanded sacrifices from Lithuanians: "The year required quick, unconventional and, I would say, often unpopular solutions, but these decisions were really inevitable because we had to ensure the national security of the state at the same time,” she said, according to Lithuanian broadcaster LRT. The state of emergency therefore facilitated political decision-making and the coordination of various institutions. In addition, he permits the use of special state funds and the army.

Source: Tichys Einblick