People began entering the EU from Belarus in the summer of 2021. They were soon routinely subjected to pushbacks – and that has continued ever since. Swedish journalist Thord Eriksson travelled to Lithuania, where the interior minister wants border guards to be allowed to open fire on people crossing the border.
The gravel road runs between rolling fields before disappearing into dense forest. It could have been out in the countryside somewhere in the Stockholm region, if it weren’t for the fence. It glints in the August sun, topped with thick coils of razor wire. With only a few gaps, the four-metre-high structure runs the entire 1,250-kilometre stretch that separates the EU from Belarus, from Latvia in the north to Poland in the south, with Lithuania in between.
Recently, right-wing populists across Europe like Italy’s neo-fascist prime minister Giorgia Meloni, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and AfD chair Alice Weidel in Germany held up Spain as a threat to the EU and to freedom of movement.
Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk held up his own country’s border regime – essentially identical to Lithuania’s – as a model, saying Spain must follow Poland’s example if Schengen is to survive.
