The EU is being asked to pay for border fences to keep migrants out

THE EUROPEAN UNION has a firm stance on paying for border walls: it won’t. Even after Europe’s migration crisis in 2015-16, when 1.4m people arrived, many fleeing Syria’s civil war, the European Commission sent Hungary away with a flea in its national ear when it asked for reimbursement for fencing off its border with Serbia, one of the main entry points.

Nothing in the Schengen Borders Code, which governs border management, a shared responsibility between the EU and its member states, stops the commission from paying for fences. But the view in Brussels is that they are costly and ineffective. They can be climbed. They divert rather than deter migrants. And they get in the way of genuine refugees with the right to asylum. The EU sends border guards and pays for higher-tech solutions instead.