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The European Fee has not directly endorsed Poland’s 186km border wall with Belarus, which cuts by protected forests.
“It’s clear that below EU legislation we will shield each the setting and public security,” stated the house affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson on Thursday (5 Could).
She stated “overriding public security” exemptions could also be utilized by member states to break protected environments below the EU’s Habitats Directive.
Johansson didn’t explicitly assist the wall, noting as a substitute that Poland should show there are not any alternate options — and compensate for the environmental affect.
Poland is spending €353m on the 5.5m excessive wall, which it says is required to maintain Belarus from sending over folks from locations like Afghanistan and Iraq.
Tens of hundreds, together with ladies and kids, tried to cross final yr.
Many had been and proceed to be illegally pushed again into Belarus. In accordance with the Worldwide Group for Migration, at the least 22 folks died final yr within the try.
Others have been detained in asylum centres, together with some who’ve gone on starvation strike given the situations.
Poland has additionally banned journalists and humanitarian support businesses from coming into a so-called exclusion zone close to the Belarus border.
Locals who dwell close to the zone threat fines and prolonged jail sentences if caught serving to folks misplaced within the woods.
Foot dragging
Johansson’s statements are additionally prone to rile environmentalists and lecturers who in early February petitioned the fee to behave.
The wall runs by protected Natura 2000 areas. This consists of the Bialowieza forest, a Unesco World Pure Heritage website.
Bialowieza is a major forest, spanning some 141,885 hectares, and is dwelling to 12,000 animal species together with the most important inhabitants of European bison.
Though development began in early January, it took the Brussels-executive till late April earlier than sending Warsaw a letter demanding how the wall complies with EU environmental legislation.
“As quickly because the Polish authorities sends us a reply, we are going to replace you on this vital concern,” Johansson informed the European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg on Thursday.
However MEPs accused the fee of foot-dragging on the problem, provided that the wall is already nearing completion.
“The fee says that the state of affairs is complicated and requires evaluation. We heard the identical factor when the rule of legislation was violated in Poland and Hungary,” stated Polish Inexperienced MEP, Sylwia Spurek.
Criticism additionally got here from the centre-right European Individuals’s social gathering (EPP).
Talking on behalf of the group, Polish MEP Elżbieta Katarzyna Łukacijewska stated the wall was pointless as a result of it would not cease folks from attempting to enter some place else.
Journalists can enter Ukraine the place they threat getting killed however not the Polish exclusion zone “for the sake of their security”, she stated.
“This raises many doubts and ambiguities,” she stated.
Others in Poland are additionally vital of the wall, together with the regional president of Terespol, Krysztof Iwaniuk, who additionally lives in a city of the identical title that straddles the Belarus border alongside the Bug river.
“I do not perceive this wall. It offers me the chills,” he informed EUobserver in a latest interview, noting he had helped tear down the Berlin wall in his youth.
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