Last year I drew attention to the big work programme highlighted on the EU website to strengthen Turkey’s borders as part of its Visa Liberalisation programme with the EU. The officials wrote that they needed “ditch excavation, lighting, wire entanglement, trellis fence, road maintenance and construction and modular wall construction” along the extended  Turkish border with Syria and Iraq. It would be good to have an update on how far they have got with their 900 km Syria/Turkey wall.
I raise it again because many in the EU are hostile to Mrs Trump’s proposal to extend the already substantial USA/Mexico wall. I wonder why they apply different standards to this wall than to the ones the EU is helping finance and design closer to home. I invite proponents of the EU to tell us why they think these two walls are different, and why they support the Turkish one which is part of the EU/Turkey Agreement.
The EU approved border controls including ones along EU borders can incorporate watch towers, constant camera surveillance and plenty of “guards” to deal with any problems at crossing points. The 10th action point in the 72 point “Visa Liberalisation Roadmap”  is to ensure sufficient well trained guards and surveillance equipment at crossing points.  The 33rd point in the 72 point “Visa Liberalisation roadmap” agreed with Turkey by the EU is to “ensure effective expulsion of illegally residing 3rd country nationals.”
If it is moral to oppose border walls and barriers in Mexico, surely it is similarly necessary to oppose them in Europe and Middle East?
January 31, 2017
Good point. But as soon as border guards start shooting people the liberals will force the walls to come down.
January 31, 2017
If you mean Turkey (rather than Mexico) I don’t believe the EU has any real leverage-President Erdogan can threaten to flood Europe with the refugees already there and/or provide further demonstrations of his threatened reorientation towards Mr Putin’s Eurasian bloc.
January 31, 2017
Well being rational or consistent has never been a strong point of lefties, the “BBC think” types or the remainers. You say:- “I wonder why they apply different standards to this wall than to the ones the EU is helping finance and design closer to home.”
Simple, Trump is an enemy and they will use any stick they can find to beat him, these people are never remotely consistent. Trump however has clearly has scored an own goal by such arbitrary targeting, catching many innocent people in the net.
January 31, 2017
It is frightening how far left the politicos and media have become. It is also frightening the venim, labels and bile they use if you disagree with their view.
Sad to see pardons granted to convicts who knew they broke the law. Glad equality has reigned today, but you cannot change history on a whim or lefty fad.
January 31, 2017
Careful Mr R! You’ll melt generation snowflake with such facts.
January 31, 2017
John, I am sure that Melania had nothing to do with it ?…..
But surely you must see the perfect symmetry in their argument. You see, anything the EU does is good good good and anything Trump does is bad bad bad…. i see that Guy V has come back from USA to say that Trump is an existential threat to the EU, along with Putin and ISIS! The battlelines are being drawn, and one angry influential man who lost over a billion dollars is not very happy…..
zorro
January 31, 2017
Did I not see and hear on Newsnight last night that same Guy V say it was going to cost the UK 600bn to leave.
January 31, 2017
Equivalent to 60 years of current (without inflation) net UK contribution to the EU coffers – clearly bonkers and one oyster short of a dozen!
zorro
January 31, 2017
Should they (the remaining 27) not be buying out our share of the trillions of investments over the decades?
January 31, 2017
Good morning.
It is a simple deflection technique. All the while people are being made to look over there, they are not able to concentrate on what is happening in front of them.
All over the world walls are being erected. Not much mention of these walls and, like so much else, when I try to expose these things here they never get posted. Let us hope this one makes it ?
But walls and borders are only as good as those that wish to maintain them. Sadly we in this country, despite having a moat rather than a wall, do not take the matter as seriously as we should. So it is nice to see someone in the form of President Trump putting these people to shame.
January 31, 2017
“If it is moral to oppose border walls and barriers in Mexico, surely it is similarly necessary to oppose them in Europe and Middle East”? Well, indeed, of course the walls should be equally opposed but the ‘everything EU good, all else bad’ chatterati in Parliament and across the world will ensure that there is no chance of it happening.
I always wonder how such folk can drop shutters in their mind in defence of their beloved EU when it comes to anything that doesn’t fit their opinions, whilst ignoring the facts of a particular matter such as this…..
January 31, 2017
John,
By rights, the EU will insist on splattering the wall with signs showing the world that it was built with EU money!
January 31, 2017
Should that not read built with ‘our’ money.
January 31, 2017
“EU money” being money taken of other people & businesses and then spent by them far less wisely than it would have been.
January 31, 2017
Mr Redwood,
please don’t forget the border fence/wall in Spanish Morocco (Cueta).
January 31, 2017
Yes, we need to keep reminding people about these, the only ‘walls’ the EU has between it and Africa – actually excellent, successful double fences of 6 m high wire as I saw a few weeks ago.
Actually there are two – one protecting Ceuta and the other Melilla.
The Ceuta one was ‘attacked’ by over a thousand young black Africans (not Moroccans) over New Year. Two got to the top of the first fence and then fell into the no-man’s land between the two fences, were injured and taken to a Spanish hospital. A third who was not injured was simply pushed back into Morocco through a gate in the fence by the Spanish Guardia Civil.
January 31, 2017
… and the extended fences around the terminals in Calais.
January 31, 2017
hefner
“…extended fences around the terminals in Calais.”
They have a wall as well now, all paid for by us of course.
Drove past it only a few months ago, not much graffiti on it yet, but just wait a while.
January 31, 2017
Osborne’s apprenticeship tax scheme seems, rather predictably, to be proving to be another damaging disaster I see. Just get the government out of the damn way please and stop taxing and regulating businesses to death.
January 31, 2017
Why the difference ?
EU news is sanitised, 90% of EU residents are probably unaware of the new barrier being constructed between Turkey and Syria, and 99% are probably unaware that we are paying for it.
Likewise how many were aware that Obama had a ban on some immigrants to the USA in 2011 on the grounds of security.
Selective news reporting yet again, just another example you could have picked from thousands of other non reported, but related facts.
January 31, 2017
German inflation, Turkish wall, what other d/reflections in the coming days? I am so tense on my seat , so eager to learn from this Mouth of Wisdom.
January 31, 2017
@Mr Redwood, you’re (partly) right, i think.
It isn’t the gist of what Trump is proposing that is the problem, however, but that way’s he’s gone about it which comes across as f**k you Mexico, igniting all kinds of cheap sentiments simply to win the Presidency. A more balanced, more sensible Republican wouldn’t have done this. Unfortunately Trump took America by surprise, using a kind of campaign blitzkrieg to get into power.
January 31, 2017
He didn’t take the Trump voters by surprise. They listened to him over the months and liked what he said and his supporters rapidly grew in numbers. It was the media who refused to report his policies, or show videoclips of the huge rallies that he addressed, and who generally buried their heads in the sand over Trump, that were taken by surprise, along with the Left, who though they had it sewn up.
The media, were in my view, negligent in their duty to inform readers/viewers of what was actually happening, but they failed because they were apparently following a political agenda, which very definitely did not involve publicising Trump’s views. The Left, and the compliant media, thought that if they smeared and ridiculed and tried to ostracise Trump supporters that they could destroy the man himself.
January 31, 2017
The political left usually react to loss of power by mobilising the useful idiots to march, strike & riot. The usual suspects are working overtime to stir up hysterical mobs. Of course the virtue signalling celebs are falling in behind in order to cement their credibility with the BBC & other MSM that have fallen under control of the collectivists.
Their goal is to bring down conservative government here and in the USA and to prevent any further loss of power in upcoming European elections.
If the government wish to prevent this mass manipulation of the gullible by the graduates of the Frankfurt school, they need to address the infiltration of the establishment, including the education system, the MSM and the civil service.
Drain the swamp.
January 31, 2017
The Mexican wall will not work. We all know that. It was promised and is being delivered after the election. Mexican drug barons need more than a wall to stop them. Mexican immigrants know all about the Gulf of Mexico. Aeroplanes fly over walls.
The European wall won’t work either. While we are carrying people across the Mediterranean Sea from Libya and Tunis to Italy by our various navies and while human ingenuity has discovered the Black Sea, immigration of all sorts and conditions of men and women and babies will continue to arrive, much of it living rough.
Meanwhile the Lefties are really happy with lots and lots of chanting – something which they have forbidden in Primary Schools.
January 31, 2017
Mike
“The Mexican wall will not work”
It will stand more of a chance than us policing 9,000 miles of coastline with 4 small Navy boats.
Been across the Channel in a small power cruiser, security is a farce even if going into our small coastal harbours.
Indeed no better when going from one UK harbour to another UK Harbour.
Much more attention was paid to us as we passed the Houses of Parliament on the Thames, been questioned a few times on that route, even been boarded a couple of times to be checked out.
We desperately need to order/ build (in the UK) more coastal patrol boats, and quickly.
January 31, 2017
Dear Sir,
May I carefully point out that I do not think the EU is asking what is left of Syria to build and pay its own wall.
Best regards
January 31, 2017
Germany will need walls soon. I’ve just seen these figure.
750,000 migrants entered Germany last year. At a cost to the German purse of 43 billion Euros.
January 31, 2017
Its simple — double standards !. The EU bureaucracy has no in depth integrity ; it cannot see beyond the end of its nose .
January 31, 2017
If I was American and I saw some of the Commons proceedings yesterday I would wonder whether my country should even be allied to a country run by such a bunch of idiots.
January 31, 2017
Denis. Great comment.
January 31, 2017
Dear fedup–Yes, agreed–I am forever saying that I cannot see why we need MP’s to speak for us. They are just a statistically inadequate, and therefore laughably inaccurate, sample of the real thing and, a few exceptions apart, do nothing to persuade me that they have any better judgement than the population as a whole. That, for my money, almost by definition, cannot be bettered so we should want much more direct democracy. Such was not so easy once but it is now. Who cares what for instance the likes of Clarke think? You must be joking.
January 31, 2017
Not to mention the wall on Mexico southern border or the wall the UK has just paid for in Calais..
January 31, 2017
Probably the the 33rd point to “ensure effective expulsion of illegally residing 3rd country nationals” is EU-speak for “re-locate them all to Germany where they must receive a generous welcome”.
January 31, 2017
Walls, border barriers of any kind are unnecessary. All that is needed is a personal identity card; without which you cannot open a bank account, make any claim on social services, obtain work, and pretty much any other normal social interaction! I lived for over 20 years in such a society and it works just fine.
January 31, 2017
These people who are saying the extrication charge will now (they reckon) be Eu 500 billion must be barking mad. If that’s the cost to leave, imagine what it would cost, and has been costing, to stay. Mrs May should provide more of the intense clarity they apparently like. I bet there are many countries in the EU who do not like this nonsense.
January 31, 2017
Good points John. If someone like Trump had failed to shut Guantanamo Bay over two presidencies you can be sure the liberal elite would be screaming.
There are lots of other double standards. Apparently its outrageous to want to X-Ray supposed child refugee teeth in an attempt to roughly validate their age, and yet its OK for Brits wanting entry to, say, Australia to have to take a chest X-Ray to prove they have not got TB. Apparently a tooth X-Ray is too much radiation risk but a chest X-Ray is not. And apparently the chances of your average Brit having TB are a bigger problem than the obvious adults coming in as supposed child refugees here. The way out politicians have reacted to this set of issues has been very poor, a child of 6 could do better.
January 31, 2017
There always exists a fraction determined to destroy European democracy and stability and for them consistency is an irrelevance.
Hence, as far as membership of the EU is concerned, it is always “EU good, outside EU bad” whatever the subject or circumstances as they see the EU simply as a force for weakening democracy and the stability of the nation state.
Their most liked EU “freedom” is freedom of movement especially when combined with the EU expanding to include as many countries as possible, many of whom are not considered to be European, or have a western European culture.
They are constantly and aggressively pushing for worldwide freedom of movement with the intention to cause massive migrations into Europe, especially from those regions of the world whose populations are not known for welcolming European democracy, tolerance or equality.
So it can be expected that Turkey’s border fences will be opposed once the EU has granted freedom of movement to “Turkish” citizens.
January 31, 2017
Don’t expect logic from those opposed to Trump. The Great Wall of Mexico could become a Tourist attraction!.
January 31, 2017
Double standards is a trait the left appears very comfortable with as they are with so many other obnoxious attributes. They go to almost any lengths to achieve their objectives even to the point of using physical force. They are not strangers to intolerance, deceit and obfuscation. To them the means justify the end. They are oblivious to the contradictions inherent in their thinking and their actions.
They call their beliefs progressive and liberal. When in fact they wish to turn the clock back to a more feudal system. An oligarchy of those who have a more superior vision and wisdom than the rest of us hoi pelloi. So in reality they are regressive and authoritarian. Something that can be observed in the policies and practices of the EU’s Brussels technocracy. It is therefore no surprise that the ranks of the remainers are filled with these so called liberal progressives.
January 31, 2017
Regarding your speech in parliament. All I can say is BRILLIANT. I just hope some of the idiots sitting on your opposite side and indeed some on your own side take note.
January 31, 2017
I am sick to death of hearing the news and others gobbing off against Trump. It won’t matter what he does or doesn’t do, it will be wrong as those at the BBC and the like just simply won’t let him be or have a good run at being president. All are an utter disgrace. We would not be having any of this rubbish in the UK if the remainiacs had won. I wonder what they will say if we have to build a wall between Scotland and England???? Or will we finally get ID cards??
January 31, 2017
I feel it should be of even greater interest by way of focus:-
Why should the European Union have any opinion or even a fanciful passing thought whatsoever on a construction on the USA/Mexican border? Have they been unfairly barred from selling cement and render?
January 31, 2017
See “The great Mexican wall deception” on alternet.org
“Indeed, one of the greatest “secrets” of the 2016 election campaign (though it should be common knowledge) is that the border wall already exists. It has for years and the fingerprints all over it aren’t Donald Trump’s but the Clintons’, both Bill’s and Hillary’s…………
Although wall construction began during Bill Clinton’s administration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) built most of the approximately 700 miles of fencing after the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was passed. At the time, Senator Hillary Clinton voted in favor of that Republican-introduced bill, along with 26 other Democrats. “I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in,” she commented at one 2015 campaign event, “and I do think you have to control your borders.”…
January 31, 2017
Off topic. Saw you in parliament Tuesday pm MAGNIFICENT!!!!!
January 31, 2017
Here here!
January 31, 2017
Correction : Hear hear!
(I was not showing agreement with Opposition )
January 31, 2017
Great Art 50 Speech, saw on twitter. The public thank you.
(and there’s a lot more of us than the “elite”)
January 31, 2017
Tariffs and taxes act in a similar way to physical walls.
Most of the countries in the EU are poor and our ÂŁ11,000 tax free income allowance is a massive drawer for all those countries with an average income under that. Should they not pay to access our tax free allowance as these transient workers take our productivity chain back to their country to spend?
Is a Tariff and tax policies not the same as a physical wall?
January 31, 2017
Quite right on the walls. On borders, Amber Rudd is shaming us all again, sucking up to the media in the hope of redeeming her lost liberal reputation. Can’t you explain to her that she is supposed to be Home Secretary here, not the USA? Our borders need guarding and aren’t being. Our immigration numbers need reducing and aren’t being. As with Mrs May, she is in no position to lecture the Americans and it won’t make her any more popular with the media, human rights lawyers, left wing politicians, or moslem immigrants.
January 31, 2017
PS you were very good in the House of Commons. Thank you.
February 1, 2017
If you read the newspapers this hase been the subject of critisism for some time. But then I’m sure you would have done your reasearch properly. Which suggests you deliberately missed out facts.
Oh dear. nothing new from Mr Redwood.