Shameful or understandable? The announcement of the construction of a wall on the external border of the European Union (EU) by Poland, due to an influx of migrants orchestrated, according to the EU, by Belarus, caused a reaction in France .
Gabriel Attal accused Tuesday, November 16, on France Inter, Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian President, of “Inhuman and macabre staging” aiming to “Fracture” Europe and “To scare the Europeans”. The government spokesperson has recalled ” solidarity ” of the French State with Poland. Yes “The situation and this escalation” between Warsaw and Minsk on “Sorry”, the government spokesman said about the wall did not have “No lessons to be taught”. Same tone from MEP Renew / La République en Marche (LRM) Nathalie Loiseau who said on Sud Radio “Both includes[dre[drethe reaction of the Poles who feel attacked, assailed ”, while raising the “Tragic side of the story”, Poland being “On the other side of the iron curtain” before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
On the other hand, interviewed Tuesday morning on France 2, the State Secretary for European Affairs, Clément Beaune, opposed the construction of the wall, scheduled for January 2022 : “I am for a Europe which holds its borders but not for a Europe which bristles with barbed wire or is covered with walls”. Denouncing the “De facto blackmail put in place by Belarus, aided by Russia”, Aurore Bergé, Deputy Chairman of the LRM Group at the National Assembly, was also opposed on Radio J to any construction of a wall.
“Shameful solution” or “wall that protects”
In the opposition, the announcement of Poland was denounced on the left. La France rebellious MEP Manon Aubry wrote in a tweet see in this wall project, to block immigration, “The result of the infamous diplomatic dupe game in which the EU allowed itself to be locked up by accepting the instrumentalization of human lives by Lukashenko”.
“It is a shameful solution, which takes us back to the cold war, to a time when we made walls between Europeans”, echoed the first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, on LCI, demanding that Emmanuel Macron say “His official indignation with regard to the Polish project”.
On the right and the extreme right, the announcement of the construction of this wall on the Polish border is, on the contrary, seen as welcome. Republicans MP and presidential candidate Eric Ciotti wished, on Twitter, that Europe support Poland “When it builds a wall to protect our external borders from migratory invasion”. Jordan Bardella, the interim president of the National Assembly, also called France, on RTL, To “Accompanying the construction of a wall that protects, because what Poland is undergoing today is called an invasion”.