Guarding Europe’s new ‘iron curtain’

By Simon Coss

Date: 29/04/04

FORGET what you may have heard. The iron curtain has not disappeared. It's just moved eastwards a few hundred kilometres.

All along the EU's new eastern edge from the north of Estonia to the southernmost point of Bulgaria an army of engineers, builders and frontier guards have spent the last decade or so busily erecting a spanking new, heavily patrolled border.

With help from EU coffers and an awful lot of home-grown funding and effort, the new member states have created an imposing line of fences, walls, watchtowers and checkpoints where once there was little more than a line on the map.

And they have done it at the behest of the same western European powers who heralded the 1989 fall of the hated Berlin Wall as the most important event this continent has witnessed since the end of the Second World War.

The message to the then applicant states was stark and simple: If you cannot secure the EU's eastern external border, you're not joining the club.

It was a message that all of them took to heart and 15 years later the results are there for all to see.

Bringing border controls up to EU standards has presented a huge challenge for all ten of the central and eastern European countries (CEECs) set to join the Union either next month or in 2007.

While all received some Union assistance for upgrading border facilities, this money only represented a small fraction of the total investment needed. The applicants had to find the majority of the funds themselves and they had to do it at a time when they were making the often extremely painful transition from centrally planned to market economies.

In many cases the term "upgrading border facilities" is misleading. During the communist era controls between Soviet bloc countries and the Soviet Union itself were cursory to say the least. In many cases the border simply did not exist in any meaningful sense. This means that since 1989, the CEECs have often had to invest a huge amount of money, pretty much building a new border from scratch.

But these major investments in infrastructure represent only a part of the work the CEECs had to do to bring their border controls into line with what EU governments were demanding of them. They also had to train a whole generation of officials to guard the new border. In many cases this meant creating entirely new border guard services to take over frontier patrolling duties traditionally carried out by the army.

On top of that, the applicant states had to pledge to pay these border guards a decent wage, so that they would not be open to corruption by shady characters eager to cross into the EU illegally.

The big question is has all of this sacrifice and effort paid off? Is the EU's eastern border now secure?

In Brussels the jury would still appear to be out on this score, with some sceptics suggesting that the frontier is still not as it should be. But in the central and eastern European countries themselves members of the different national border guard services insist the new frontier is safe in their hands.

"I am confident that we can do our job today and will continue to do it when our country joins the European Union," Arvid Liepins who heads the border guard department in the run-down eastern Latvian town of Ludza tells European Voice.

Liepins' patch is a 138 kilometre stretch of Latvia's border with Russia that runs from the Ritupes river in the north to the intersection between Latvia, Belarus and Russia in the south. Much of the border is covered with dense pine and birch forest and is only accessible using all-terrain vehicles or four-wheeled quad motorcycles. Despite their isolated location, Liepins says he and his guards are well aware of the role they have to play in the EU's fight against terrorism, organized crime and illegal immigration.

"We have to be on the lookout for terrorists from Chechnya who may try to cross into Latvia from Russia and we are also aware of the problem of criminal gangs in the east," he explains.

The EU recently helped to fund the construction of a new 35-metre tall watchtower in the forest as well as a number of state-of-the-art crossing points where illegal immigrants can be held and questioned.

The chief border guard says he is confident that with this new equipment he and his subordinates will be able to do the job expected of them. "We still need more guards here," he explains. "But we should get them when Latvia joins the EU, because then we will be able to transfer some of the people currently working on our border with Lithuania," he adds.

The border guards have also increased their controls on road crossings between Latvia and Russia. At the newly renovated Terehova border crossing, about 30 kilometres east of Ludza, lorries are routinely checked with Geiger counters to see if they are carrying illicit nuclear material stolen in Russia and queues of cars and trucks on both sides of the frontier stretch back for several kilometres.

But while all of this increased vigilance along the EU's new eastern border appears to have gone some way to calming the fears of the Union's existing governments, it has a very different effect on many people who live in the frontier region. Ludza is a good example of the problem. Most people in the town actually speak Russian as their first language and local architecture, which mostly consists of battered one story wooden buildings and a few soviet era tenements, certainly seems to have more in common with Latvia's giant eastern neighbour than with the national capital Riga.

"My family has Russian origins," one local Ludza woman told this paper. "My grandmother still lives just over the other side of the border and I visit her as often as I can. But sometimes there are 20 kilometre tailbacks when you try to cross the frontier now, so I don't see her as much as I used to," she adds.

It's the same story in the eastern parts of neighbouring Lithuania. Aside from ensuring terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants don't cross the Union's new eastern frontier, all of the new member states have also had to introduce tough new controls on meat, vegetables and other foodstuffs imported into the EU. There are very valid public health concerns behind the new rules, which are essentially designed to keep out potentially dangerous plant and animal diseases.

They have also had some unexpected side effects. "In some eastern villages people who live in Lithuania kept small allotments just across the border in Russia," one Lithuanian veterinary expert who asked not to be named tells European Voice. "Recently we had to suspend imports of potatoes from Russia because of a plant health scare and the local people were also banned from bringing home produce from their allotments," she adds.

Similar tales of communities cut in two can be heard all the way along the Union's new eastern border, giving talk of European reunification a painfully ironic twist for many local people.

The new EU Member States have worked hard to bring external border controls on the EU's new eastern edge up to EU standards. Article is part of a European Voice Special Report on EU Enlargement.