The International Spectator

Italian Journal of International Affairs

ISSN: 0393-2729 (Print) 1751-9721 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rspe20

Containing the Refugee Crisis: How the EU Turned

the Balkans and Turkey into an EU Borderland

Jonathan Zaragoza-Cristiani

To cite this article: Jonathan Zaragoza-Cristiani (2017): Containing the Refugee Crisis: How
the EU Turned the Balkans and Turkey into an EU Borderland, The International Spectator, DOI:
10.1080/03932729.2017.1375727

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03932729.2017.1375727

Published online: 10 Nov 2017.

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 The International Spectator, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/03932729.2017.1375727

Containing the Refugee Crisis: How the EU Turned the Balkans

and Turkey into an EU Borderland
Jonathan Zaragoza-Cristiani
European University Institute, Florence
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ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The events that took place during the 2015-16 refugee crisis in the Borderlands; buffer zone;
southeastern EU region boosted unprecedented bordering processes. Balkans; refugee crisis;
Borders were reinforced and extended and a costly and difficult deal migration; Fortress Europe
with Turkey was undertaken; the western Balkans were turned into
a vast buffer zone made up of multiple buffer states with fences of
all types and sizes; while Greece was ring-fenced and to this day
struggles to manage thousands of refugees stranded in camps all over
its territory. By seeking to contain the refugee flows, the EU turned its
southeastern region into a fortified EU borderland.

A vast literature on borders, migration and EU policies agrees that the EU has sought in
recent decades to create a buffer zone or EU borderland1 around the European Union, in
which the neighbour states in the EU periphery act as protective barriers, stopping irregular
migrants in transit on their way to Europe. By transferring EU migration control measures
to its southern neighbours, the EU has sought to delocalise, externalise, outsource, off-shore,
stretch, export and/or expand far beyond its own external borders.2
However, the events that took place during the 2015-16 refugee crisis in the southeastern
EU region have boosted unprecedented processes of bordering that require in-depth reflec-
tion to understand their complexity.3 Indeed, the refugee crisis has created a southeastern
EU fortified borderland, in which the Balkan region and Turkey are now a large buffer
zone made of fortressed states. Any movement through these countries involves a dramatic
hopscotch4 across fenced-off buffer states.
This bordering process raises many challenges, redefining the traditional conceptualisation
of borderlands and EU external borders. The security zone the EU has built to contain the

CONTACT  Jonathan Zaragoza-Cristiani  jonathan.zaragoza@eui.eu   @JZaragoza7

1
Del Sarto, “Borderlands”.
2
Lutterbeck, "Policing migration in the Mediterranean"; Bialasiewicz, “Off-shoring and out-sourcing”; Casas-Cortes et al.,
"'Good neighbours make good fences'; De Genova et al., "New keywords: migration and borders".
3
From the beginning of 2015 to the signature of the EU-Turkey deal on 20 March 2016, an unprecedented number of migrants
reached Greece and crossed the western Balkans going north. During this period, EU and non-EU countries all along the
refugee corridor, from Turkey to Germany, found themselves overwhelmed by the number of people crossing their terri-
tories, seeking to reach Northern Europe. For several months, the refugee crisis seemed to be impossible to manage, by
governments and the EU itself.
4
Dramatic for migrants since they had to struggle to cross each territory and border along the route.
© 2017 Istituto Affari Internazionali
 2   J. ZARAGOZA-CRISTIANI

refugee flows cannot be compared to any of the previous buffer states, buffer zones, bor-
derlands, “ring of friends” or “concentric circles”5 that have characterised the construction
of the EU’s external borders since enlargement. The kind of multilateral border control
cooperation that has been set up between several EU and non-EU countries to contain the
refugee crisis has rarely been seen before. The EU has had not only to reinforce its external
borders and external buffer zones, but also fortify part of its internal borders and turn some
of its member states into buffers. This borderland stretches from Hungarian territory and
Slovenian-Austrian fenced borders to the Turkish-Syrian border, and involves EU candidates,
non-Schengen EU members and EU Schengen members, in other words, countries with
variable border geometries6 and different levels of EU integration.
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The aim of this article is to capture the multiplicity and plurality of bordering processes
that have taken place in the southeastern EU borderlands as a result of the refugee crisis.7
The article is divided into three sections. The first will discuss the main approaches to
fortification, EU borderlands and buffer zones, and briefly present the ways in which the
refugee crisis has challenged and invited a reconceptualisation of these positions. Second,
it will analyse the evolution of the refugee crisis and describe the measures and strategies
implemented by the various governments in southeastern Europe to reduce the flow of
refugees. More specifically, it will focus on the diverse fencing and border control measures
put in place in the different phases and geographic locations, as well as the effects they have
had on the refugee flows, such as the mushrooming of refugee camps all along the migra-
tion route crossing the EU’s southeastern borderlands. In the last part, the argument will
be made that, by seeking to contain the refugee flows, the EU has turned this region into a
fortified EU borderland, made up of multiple fenced-off buffer states. This situation creates
new theoretical insights regarding terms such as ‘Fortress Europe’ and EU borderlands,
which will be discussed.

Fortification, buffer zones and EU borderlands

The EU’s external borders have generally been seen from two opposing points of view.
On the one hand, there is the view that supports the existence of a Fortress Europe,8 with
eased internal borders and fixed, closed and hard external ones. On the other hand, there
are scholars who argue that EU policies (mostly within the framework of the European
Neighbourhood Policy - ENP) increasingly promote fuzzy EU external borders, whereby
neighbours in the eastern and southern periphery act as buffer areas, or borderlands.9
Borderlands are “areas in closest geographic proximity to a border that are directly
affected by the latter”.10 The term borderland “lends itself to consider different layers of

5
Heeg and Ossenbrügge, “State Formation and Territoriality”.
6
As Del Sarto argues: “[T]he variable border geometry that defines membership in the EU, the Schengen area, the internal
market, and the ‘Euro-zone’, clearly implies a disassociation of different types of territorial and functional boundaries (which,
however, may also coincide). From this vantage point, the variegated belonging of EU members and EEA/EFTA states to
different supranational rules and legal frameworks also entails the establishment of distinct territorial and functional
borders, which coexist with internal borders among member states.” See Del Sarto, “Borderlands”, 5.
7
This article is based on observations and interviews gathered during two field trips to the western Balkans and Greece in
May 2016 and 2017, which involved visiting several refugee camps in Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Serbia, FYR of
Macedonia and Bulgaria, as well as the border crossings and fences all along the Western Balkan migratory route.
8
Carter and Merrill, “Bordering Humanism”.
9
Del Sarto, “Borderlands”.
10
Del Sarto, “Defining Borders and People in Borderlands”, 6.
 THE INTERNATIONAL SPECTATOR   3

‘cooperation’ and ‘integration’ which characterise the transit area between the EU and the
periphery’s hinterland”, paying attention also “to the gradual expansion of different regimes
and functional boundaries”.11
Since the launch of the ENP in 2003, the EU has promoted this type of interaction and
cooperation, seeking to create a “wider Europe” and “ring of friends” around the EU.12
Buffer states13 and buffer zones have the role of insulating the EU from turbulences,14
shielding “core Europe (and its states)”15 from external threats (generally refugees and
economic migrants), and pushing those outside away from the EU’s borders.16 Indeed, until
the 2015-16 refugee crisis, this “protective belt”17 managed to keep the migratory flows at
a distance, since the EU had succeeded in transferring and outsourcing key aspects of its
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external border management to its southern neighbours. It also funded the construction
of detention centres and camps for migrants in several of these countries.18
This EU strategy has been considered an illustration of the imperial stance the EU takes
when it looks at its ‘outside’, since the concept of ring of friends promotes a hierarchy
of otherness.19 This hierarchy was evident after the 2004 EU enlargement, when coun-
tries such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania went from buffer states to EU border states, or
“buffer-turned-border states”.20 Precisely due to these hierarchies and tailor-made bilateral
interactions between the EU and each of its neighbours, as well as the diversity of border
regimes in the EU neighbours (underpinned by different rules and degrees of permeability),
Del Sarto warns that “the buffer zone around the EU should not be conceptualized as a
homogenous, let alone congruent, area.”21
The nature of this buffer zone depends on the type and configuration of its borders.
The different kinds of borders coexisting in this area make it a “particular hybrid zone of
crossover”, where closed and open borders perform different functions.22 Concepts such as
limes, fuzzy borders, barricaded borders, variable geometry, or concentric circles have been
used to describe the diversity of borders one can find when looking at the construction of
the EU’s borders beyond enlargement.23 This diversity is the direct result of the EU’s export
of its variable border geometry to its periphery.24 It can be complex and manifold, since
the European integration process involves a multiplicity of overlapping and cross‐cutting
border regimes with a variety of functional and territorial borders.25
Consequently, some authors believe that rather than a Fortress Europe, the EU is a
multi-layered and heterogeneous polity with multiple authorities, whose borders are no

11
Del Sarto, ”Borderlands”, 165.
12
Prodi, “A Wider Europe”.
13
Novak, “The Flexible Territoriality of Borders”.
14
Walters, “Frontiers of the European Union”.
15
Scott, “The EU and ‘Wider Europe’.
16
Del Sarto and Schumacher, “From EMP to ENP”, 25-6.
17
Walters, “Frontiers of the European Union”.
18
Levy, "Refugees, Europe".
19
Walters, “Frontiers of the European Union”.
20
Galbreath and Lamoreaux, “Bastion, Beacon or Bridge?”.
21
Del Sarto, “Borderlands”, 10.
22
Ibid.
23
Holm, EU’s Neighbourhood Policy.
24
Del Sarto, “Borderlands”.
25
Ibid., 153.
 4   J. ZARAGOZA-CRISTIANI

longer hard and fixed, but blurred,26 fuzzy,27 flexible,28 soft and fluid, and with no clear
distinction between inside and outside. This unclear distinction is what has pushed several
authors to define the concept of “Fortress Europe” as misleading, since it wrongly describes
the EU borders as a juxtaposition of internal openness and exterior closure.29 Indeed, not
only do more and more scholars write about the limited capacity of fences and walls to
prevent people from entering sovereign territory,30 but some, like Didier Bigo, have gone
even further to argue that Fortress Europe is something of an impossible dream, since it
would take a chimerical use of resources, logistics and effort to stop migration totally.31
In the last decade, EU migration control measures, together with the creation of buffer
zones around the EU, succeeded relatively well in controlling migration flows.32 However,
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these measures proved to be incapable of stopping the flows of people arriving in Greece
from Turkey during the summer of 2015. At the time, media, experts and non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) not only argued that the flow of refugees was unstoppable “and one
of the greatest achievements of migration’s struggle against Fortress Europe”,33 but also
predicted that all the fences and border controls put up in the western Balkans along the
refugee corridor were going to be useless.34
Nevertheless, what nobody could have predicted is that in order to tackle the flows the EU
would implement a strategy of creating a fortified southeastern EU borderland, made up of a
multiplicity of buffer states, each one fenced off externally and implementing different types
of migration control measures internally. The fortification process consisted of gradually
tightening internal and external border controls. The measures ranged from the deployment
of border patrols (boats, guards, planes or radars) and migration control operations seeking
to control the maritime borders in the Mediterranean, to the construction of fences, and
the reinforcement of the capacity of border controls of cooperative third countries.

The gradual fortification of the EU’s southeastern borderlands

Between the summer of 2015 and the signing of the EU-Turkey deal on 20 March 2016, an
unprecedented number of refugees and migrants arrived in Greece and crossed the Balkan
region.35
During this period, EU and non-EU countries from Turkey to Germany (see Map 1),36
found themselves overwhelmed and overstretched by the unstoppable refugee flows cross-
ing their territories,37 seeking to reach Germany and other Nordic countries. By way of
26
Lutterbeck, “Blurring the Dividing Line”.
27
Christiansen et al., ‘Fuzzy Politics around Fuzzy Borders”.
28
Delanty, “Borders in a Changing Europe”.
29
Balibar, “Borderland Europe”; Linke, “Fortress Europe”.
30
Brown, “Walled states”; Dear, “Why walls won’t work”; Vallet, “Borders, Fences and Walls”. 
31
Bigo, “Frontiers and Security”, 160.
32
Ryan and Mitsilegas, Extraterritorial Immigration Control; Paoletti and Pastore, "Sharing the dirty job”.
33
Müller-Uri, “The long year of migration”.
34
“Fences cannot stop the refugee flows”, DW, 16 February 2016, https://www.dw.com/en/fences-cannot-stop-the-refugee-flows/
a-19050992; “Border fences will not stop migrants heading to Europe, think-tank says”, Ekatherimi, 10 February 2016,
https://www.ekathimerini.com/205836/article/ekathimerini/news/border-fences-will-not-stop-migrants-heading-
to-europe-think-tank-says.
35
Okyay and Zaragoza-Cristiani, “The Leverage of the Gatekeeper”.
36
Some refugees and migrants come from even further away, from countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Bangladesh, stretching the corridor to even greater length. Also, a significant number of migrants sought to reach coun-
tries to the north of Germany.
37
“Croatia overwhelmed by volume of refugees crossing from Serbia”, The Guardian, 17 September 2015, https://www.
theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/croatia-overwhelmed-by-volume-of-refugees-crossing-from-serbia
 THE INTERNATIONAL SPECTATOR   5
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Map 1. Transit routes through the EU’s southeastern borderlands in 2015 and 2016.
Source: IOM, https://migration.iom.int/europe/ (Click on the label: “Transit routes”).

illustration, the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) managed to record, in 2015

alone, approximately 388,233 people crossing the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
(FYROM); 579,518 crossing Serbia; 556,830 Croatia; and 378,604 Slovenia.38
At the beginning, the refugee crisis seemed impossible to manage. Several governments
responded by implementing what seemed to be clumsy, desperate, uncoordinated and dispa-
rate measures aimed at reducing the flows. However, they soon became an essential part of
the attempt to lock, fortify and turn all the southeastern EU borderlands into a vast fenced-
off buffer area. Two factors led to this. On the one hand, western Balkan EU member states,
together with their non-EU neighbours,39 focused on gradually closing and fencing parts
of their borders, depending on the routes followed by the refugees. On the other hand, the
EU negotiated an agreement with the Turkish government by which it took on the role of
buffer state,40 directly preventing migrants from leaving Turkish shores and forcing them
to stay on Turkish territory. Both factors led in several phases to the fortification of the
western Balkans.

38
Data that should be taken with a grain of salt, since the IOM and Frontex recorded 857,363 people arriving in Greece in
2015. See the IOM Migration Flows – Europe portal, https://migration.iom.int/europe/
39
With some coordination and support from the European Commission and Frontex.
40
Keyman, “Turkish foreign policy”.
 6   J. ZARAGOZA-CRISTIANI

211663
200000

150000 147123 151249

107843 108742
100000

67415
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54899 57066
50000

31318
13556 26971
17889
3650 17211554 1920 3447
7874
0
Mar April May June Jul Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar April May June Jul Aug
2015 2015 2016 2016

Figure 1.  Total number of arrivals in Greece from Turkey per month from March 2015 to August 2016.
Source: author’s elaboration from IOM Missing Migrant Project.

Fortification measures before the refugee crisis

Even before the unprecedented number of arrivals in Greece in August 2015 (see Figure 1),
fencing measures were already being implemented in southeastern Europe. Although there
were just a few, these fences proved to play an important role in subsequent events and in
the methods and routes that migrants followed.
For example, the 12.5 km fence along the Greek land border with Turkey, built in
December 2012, clearly played a role in the refugee crisis of 2015. For many years, migrants
had preferred to cross the Aegean Sea, until Greek authorities decided in 2009 to eliminate
the thousands of anti-personal mines buried along the Greek-Turkish border. As a conse-
quence, the migratory flows shifted their route to the land border and, especially, the 12.5
km-wide swathe where the Evros River loops back into Turkey.41 In response, by December
2012, the Greek authorities had completed the construction of a 4 m high fence along the
river made of barbed wire and equipped with thermal cameras in an attempt to block irreg-
ular migrants.42 This fence, together with the Greek-EU “Aspida” (Shield) border control
operation, initiated in August 2012,43 shifted the migratory flow back to the Greek islands
in the Aegean44 and to Bulgaria through the land border with Turkey.
As a reaction to this migratory shift, the Bulgarian government announced, in November
2013, the construction of a 3 m high razor wire metal fence on its border with Turkey. This
fence, monitored 24 hours a day by approximately 1,500 border police deployed at strategic
points to detect and prevent migrants from crossing the border, dissuaded migrants from
trying to enter Bulgaria from Turkey. Indeed, the number of crossings decreased from 11,524
in 2013, to 6,023 in 2014. By March 2016, up to 92 km of the fence had been completed,

41
“Fortress Europe: a Greek wall close up”, EUObserver, 21 December 2012.
42
“Why Greece shut the shortest, safest route for migrants and refugees”, The Huffington Post, 24 September 2015.
43
Operation including the deployment of 1800 border police officers at the Greek-Turkish land border.
44
Angeli et al., “Assessing the cost-effectiveness”.
 THE INTERNATIONAL SPECTATOR   7

although Bulgarian authorities announced their aim was to have 132.5 km completed by
July 2016.45
These two fencing measures had a deterrent impact on smugglers and migrants since
they shifted the migratory flows back towards the maritime route of the Aegean Sea.

The beginning of the refugee crisis: the refugee corridor vs fortification race
By early summer 2015, when the number of arrivals in Greece began to increase dramati-
cally, the countries situated along the Balkan migratory route reacted by implementing one
or both of the following strategies: facilitating the refugees’ transit through their territory
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as quickly and in as orderly a fashion as possible, thus creating a “refugee corridor”;46 and/
or fortifying their borders.
Initially the Greek, Croatian and Slovenian governments decided to create a refugee
corridor, mobilizing their armies to facilitate the refugee flows crossing their country.47
Croatian authorities, for example, bussed thousands of refugees from the Croatian border
with Serbia to the border with Hungary.48 However, by facilitating the flow from its own
territory to Hungary or Slovenia,49 the Croatian government received criticism from these
countries. During this period, the refugee corridor became a swollen river crossing coun-
tries and borders with relative ease. The highways and railways in Turkey and the western
Balkans became the paths followed by migrants to reach their desired destinations.
Of those who chose the latter strategy, the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, was
clearly the precursor and most determined. In June 2015, he announced the construction
of a 175 km fence along the Hungarian border with Serbia and Croatia. The 4 m high fence
dividing it from Serbia was completed by September 2015, while the one along the Croatian
border was completed by October 2015.50 With this fence, Hungarian authorities not only
succeeded in reducing the flow of migrants and refugees traveling through Hungary, but
also pushed this flow to look for other routes. Indeed, the closure of the Hungarian border
at the end of October shifted refugee flows towards Croatia and Slovenia and, in turn, forced
these countries to make a move to manage them.
The Croatian and Slovenian governments progressively changed their approach by limit-
ing the number of refugees crossing their country per day. Croatia began to close its borders
with Serbia during certain hours; Slovenia decided to allow a maximum of 2,500 refugees
per day to enter in its territory; Austria decided to accept only 1,500 per day. Consequently,
thousands of refugees began to be stranded for hours or days in temporary refugee camps,

45
Bulgaria shares a 250 km land border with Turkey. Part of the border passes through the rugged terrain of Mount Strandzha,
which acts as a natural barrier for potential migratory flows. “Is Bulgaria’s border wall forcing migrants to risk deadly cross-
ings?”, Euronews, 1 May 2015; “Return of the Iron Curtain: Soviet-era barbed wire fence is rebuilt in Bulgaria to prevent
migrants reaching Europe via new Turkish route as Prime Minister also announces plans for a wall on Greek border”, The
Daily Mail, 25 March 2016.
46
As Kasparek remarked, in October 2015 a whole “infrastructure of transit had been established across the Balkans, reaching
from the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki to several regional distribution centres in Germany. By this time, it was not just a
route anymore, but rather a corridor, i.e. a narrow and highly organized mechanism to channel and facilitate the movement
of people that only states seem to be able to provide. (…) Refugees and migrants didn’t travel the route anymore, they
were hurriedly channeled along.” Kasparek, “Routes, Corridors”.
47
“Croacia abre un paso fronterizo para permitir la entrada a miles de refugiados”, El Mundo, 19 October 2015.
48
“Croatia moves refugees to Hungarian border - as it happened”, The Guardian, 18 September 2015.
49
“Migrant crisis: Croatia closes border crossings with Serbia”, BBC, 18 September 2015.
50
“Map: Europe is building more fences to keep people out”, Washington Post, 28 October 2015; “Hungría cierra otra frontera
y fuerza a los refugiados a buscar nuevas rutas”, El País, 17 October 2015.
 8   J. ZARAGOZA-CRISTIANI

trains, or simply outdoors in September and October 2015 at the Serbia-Croatia, Croatia-
Slovenia and Slovenia-Austria borders. By the end of October 2015, for example, more than
10,000 refugees were stranded on Serbian territory.51
Following a hydraulic principle, by gradually constructing ‘dams’ all along the migratory
route, the flow of refugees towards Northern Europe through the western Balkan countries
began to slow down and decrease. However, this first phase of the fortification of the western
Balkan borders was exclusively the result of a domino effect in which each Balkan country
implemented its own fortification measures as a reaction to the measures of its neighbours.
Indeed, in this phase it seemed as if all Balkan countries were in a “fortification race”, each
trying to find a way to divert the flow towards their closest neighbour.
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The EU starts to prepare a coordinated fortification strategy

Seeking to find and coordinate solutions, the EU met with all the leaders of the countries
affected by the refugee flows along the western Balkan route: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria,
Croatia, FYROM, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia.52 In this
“Meeting on the western Balkans Migration Route” held in Brussels on 25 October, European
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, together with the countries’ leaders, agreed
on a 17-point plan to manage the flow of refugees in the Balkans.
The leaders decided to step up efforts to facilitate the return of migrants not in need
of international protection, to stop facilitating the movement of migrants to the border of
another country, and to enhance coordination, bilateral police cooperation and the exchange
of information between them. They also agreed to increase the capacity to provide temporary
shelter and border registration, as well as augment naval operations.
In addition to these points, the summit especially underlined the importance of finalising
and implementing an agreement with Turkey, reinforcing Frontex support at the border
between Bulgaria and Turkey, and strengthening border cooperation between Greece and
FYROM. Also, it decided on support for Frontex to monitor border crossings, registra-
tion and fingerprinting at the Croatian-Serbian border crossing points; and to deploy 400
police officers and essential equipment to Slovenia within a week through bilateral support.
Therefore, this meeting settled the main pillars of a phased fortification plan.
Shortly afterward, late on the evening of 18 November, the FYROM, Serbian, Croatian
and Slovenian governments decided, in a few hours and in what seemed to be a coordinated
manner, to enforce a new rule: to close the border to economic migrants and allow only
Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans to cross their borders. As a result, the many migrants from other
countries such as Somalia, Congo, Sudan, Senegal or Pakistan found themselves stranded
at their borders.53
The decision could be implemented thanks to the fortification of the FYROM-Greek
border. At the beginning of November 2015, FYROM’s authorities had decided to build a
3 m high fence similar to the one erected by Hungary along its southern border, in those
areas where flows usually crossed into Macedonia following a main road or railway. After
this, unofficial makeshift camps began to balloon out of size at the FYROM-Greek border,

51
“More than 10,000 refugees stranded in Serbia as borders close, UNHCR says”, BBC, 19 October 2015.
52
European Commission, “Meeting on the western Balkans Migration Route”.
53
Thibos, “Border games”.
 THE INTERNATIONAL SPECTATOR   9

in Idomeni and Eko Station, among others. Previously, these camps had served as transit
camps, offering people tents where they could rest or have something to eat before contin-
uing their journey.54
Additional fortification measures were implemented in the following months. Austria
began in mid-November 2015 to build a 2.2 metre high fence for 3.7 km near the Spielfeld
border crossing in southern Austria, its busiest border crossing with Slovenia.55 Slovenia,
in turn, erected a razor wire fence along its border with Croatia in the same month, which
by March 2016 stretched for more than 150 km.56
In addition to this fortification, bilateral police cooperation was established between the
EU and non-EU western Balkan countries to help each other tackle the flows of migrants
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and refugees. At least 40 Czech police officers were deployed along Macedonia’s southern
border with Greece, together with officers from countries such as Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia
and Serbia.57 Guards from other European countries were also sent to help the Greeks
manage their frontier and register migrants at the Macedonian border after an agreement
was reached between Frontex and the Greek authorities.58 All these measures managed to
slow down the flow of refugees crossing the western Balkans.

The gradual coordinated bottleneck strategy

The next phase of this gradual fortification process aimed to push the flow as far south as
possible, concentrating resources and control measures at FYROM’s southern border, and
thereby turning it into the main border of contingency and Greece into the first and main
buffer country in which refugees and migrants found themselves stranded.
This strategy began in January 2016, when the Slovenian Prime Minister, Miro Cerar,
called for greater EU support and “assistance [to Macedonia] to support controls on the
border with Greece through the secondment of police/law enforcement officers and the
provision of equipment”.59 In his letter of response to Slovenia’s prime minister, Commission
President Juncker wrote, “I welcome your suggestion.” This answer came as no surprise since
Germany and Austria, but especially Juncker, had criticised Greece for not controlling its
borders and “waving through refugees without informing” its neighbouring countries.60
Two weeks later, in mid-February, the European Commission provided €10 million “to
help the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia improve its border and migration man-
agement systems in the context of the refugee crisis”.61 Simultaneously, the Macedonian
authorities announced the erection of a second barrier of razor wire, parallel to the existing
one. Moreover, Macedonia requested help from its neighbouring countries to extend the

54
Medecins sans frontiers, “Greece: MSF teams help create a transit camp for refugees arriving to Idomeni”, 26 September
2015, https://www.msf.org/en/article/greece-msf-teams-help-create-transit-camp-refugees-arriving-idomeni
55
“Austria begins erecting fence on border with Slovenia”, DW, 7 December 2015.
56
“Slovenia reinforces border fence despite closure of migrant route”, Agence France Presse, 14 March 2016.
57
“At least 40 Czech Police Officers to be Deployed on Macedonia's Southern Border”, The Independent.mk, 21 June 2015;
Hungarian Report, “Hungarian Police Deployed to Macedonia Border” 25 May 2016.
58
Frontex, Frontex to assist Greece with registration of migrants at its land border, 3 December 2015, https://frontex.europa.
eu/news/frontex-to-assist-greece-with-registration-of-migrants-at-its-land-border-9Qg48q
59
“Macedonia Hails Slovene Plan to Stop Migrants”, BalkanInsight, 27 January 2016.
60
“Juncker drops Greece, bets on Macedonia”, Politico, 27 January 2016.
61
European Commission, “EU approves additional €10 million”.
 10   J. ZARAGOZA-CRISTIANI

existing 30 km fence to its southern border with Greece and provide extra guards and riot
gear.62
As will be seen, this phase was key to the progressive closing of the western Balkan bor-
ders. The EU and the western Balkans countries began coordinating their actions, not only
without considering Greece (an EU Schengen member), but actually taking measures to turn
it into a ring-fenced buffer state. These measures gradually produced a bottleneck effect in
which fewer and fewer migrants were able to cross the borders of the northern countries
on the western Balkan routes, while more and more migrants remained stranded in Greece.
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Locking the fortified southeastern EU borderlands

To lock the southeastern borderlands, the EU focused its efforts and resources on two goals:
first, closing off the western Balkan borders, and second, ensuring the end of arrivals from
Turkey to Greece.
To achieve the first goal, at the end of February 2016, the governments of FYROM, Serbia,
Croatia and Slovenia, which had been coordinating restrictive measures during the previ-
ous months, agreed to go a step further and allow only 580 asylum seekers to cross their
countries per day.63 These measures provoked tensions and violence at their borders, and
especially at the FYROM-Greece border, since thousands of refugees were waiting there.64
On 8 March, these governments decided to close their borders indefinitely.65
According to IOM data, at the end of March 2016 there were 53,941 migrants stranded
all along the western Balkan route, of which 50,308 in Greece; 1,230 in FYROM; 1,838 in
Serbia; 373 in Slovenia and 192 in Croatia. In February 2017, these numbers rose to a total
of 74,181 stranded migrants: 62,326 in Greece; 6,269 in Serbia; 4,294 in Bulgaria; 579 in
Croatia; 381 in Hungary; 237 in Slovenia and 95 in FYROM.66 Dozens of permanent camps
were set up in both EU and non-EU member states. Most of them were in Greece, but some
were also established in FYROM, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary and Austria.
To achieve the second goal, Turkey and the EU reached a deal in Brussels to stem migra-
tion and refugee flows from Turkey to Greece.67 By signing the EU-Turkey deal on 20 March
2016, the EU expanded its borders beyond the Aegean Sea, turning Turkey into a buffer
state. This deal stated that, first, “all new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey to the
Greek islands as of 20 March 2016 will be returned to Turkey”; second, “for every Syrian
being returned to Turkey from the Greek islands, another Syrian will be resettled to the
EU”;68 and third, Turkey would prevent irregular migration flows from its territory to the
EU. In return, the EU would accelerate the fulfilment of the visa liberalisation roadmap
with a view to lifting the visa requirements for Turkish citizens, at the latest by the end of

62
“Europe builds another wall: Macedonia erects second barrier of razor wire to stem the human tide from Greece”, Daily
Mail, 8 February 2016.
63
“Los Balcanes ignoran a la UE y bloquean a los refugiados”, La Vanguardia, 28 February 2016.
64
For example, the Macedonian government began on 21 March to refuse entry to Afghans and imposed strict controls on
Syrians and Iraqis. “Serbia closes Macedonia border to unregistered refugees”, RT, 19 February 2016; “Thousands of Migrants
Stuck in Bottleneck at Greece-Macedonia Border”, NPR, 1 March 2016.
65
“Beefed up border controls ‘shut down’ Balkan migrant route”, Euronews, 9 March 2016.
66
IOM, https://migration.iom.int/europe/
67
The deal was signed on 18 March. “Slovenia First to Implement EU-Turkey Refugee Deal”, BalkanInsight, 8 March 2016.
68
European Council, EU-Turkey Statement, 18 March 2016, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/
2016/03/18-eu-turkey-statement/
 THE INTERNATIONAL SPECTATOR   11

June 2016, and speed up the disbursement of the initially allocated €3 billion under the
Facility for Refugees in Turkey. If and when these resources were to run out, the EU would
mobilise additional funding up to another €3 billion by the end of 2018. Finally, the EU and
Turkey would continue to work toward the upgrading of the Customs Union, while Turkey’s
accession process would be re-energised, with the opening of several new chapters.69
Several events, such as President Erdogan’s refusal to change the anti-terrorism laws to
meet EU requirements,70 the failed coup attempt in Turkey of 15 July 2016,71 and the April
2017 referendum which granted Erdogan sweeping new powers prompted severe criticism
of the deal in the EU.72
At the same time, Turkish authorities, from the beginning, warned that Turkey would not
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comply with its part of the deal of containing refugees and readmitting irregular migrants
if the EU failed to lift the visa requirement by June 2016 – something that has not come
about. Nevertheless, the cooperation on migration control continues.
In order to tackle the arrival of migrants from Turkey, the EU also set up a virtual
maritime barrier in the Aegean by persuading NATO to deploy an operation there against
smuggler networks.73 In this way, the moment of rescue became the “first stage of a chain
of migration containment”.74
As a result of the agreement and the NATO operation, the number of migrants arriv-
ing on the Greek islands in April 2016 decreased by 90 percent compared to the previous
month (see Figure 1).
Nevertheless, the total closure of the borders meant that the numbers of migrants
stranded all over Greece began to increase, from around 25,000 people at the time of the
closure of the border in March to 57,000 in June 2016.75
Meanwhile, Turkey had already registered almost 2 million refugees by August 2015,
a number which rose to almost 3 million by March 2016.76 Most of these refugees live in
Turkish cities and the 26 ‘container cities’ (housing made from used shipping containers77)
spread throughout Turkish territory and run by AFAD, Turkey’s disaster and emergency
management authority.
However, the restrictive measures aimed at pushing migrants away from the EU’s south-
eastern borderlands did not end with the EU-Turkey deal. For example, on 24 May 2016,
the EU persuaded Greek authorities to dismantle all the unofficial camps near the FYROM-
Greek border. Suspiciously, this came just a few hours after the Eurozone ministers decided
to give Greece access to a €10.3 bn tranche of bailout funds.78

69
For more on the EU-Turkey deal, see the article by Batalla Adam in this issue.
70
“EU-Turkey visa deal on brink as Erdoğan refuses to change terror laws”, The Guardian, 6 May 2016, https://www.theguardian.
com/world/2016/may/06/erdogan-turkey-not-alter-anti-terror-laws-visa-free-travel-eu
71
Aydıntaşbaş et al. “EU-Turkey relations after July 15”.
72
European Commission, Statement by President Juncker, High Representative/Vice-President Mogherini and Commissioner
Hahn on the referendum in Turkey, 16 April 2017, https://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_STATEMENT-17-981_en.htm
73
In February 2016, at the request of Germany, Greece and Turkey, NATO decided to join international efforts in dealing
with this crisis. NATO, NATO’s Deployment in the Aegean Sea, https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/
pdf_2016_05/20160519_1605-factsheet-aegean-sea.pdf.
74
Tazzioli, “Concentric cages”.
75
IOM, Migration Flows Europe, https://migration.iom.int/europe/
76
It reached 3.1 million in August 2017. UNHCR, “Syria Regional Refugee Response”. UNHCR, ““Figures at a glance”, https://
www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html.
77
“Container City”, Reuters, 4 July 2012. https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/container-city-idUSRTR34KUX
78
This refers to the infamous unofficial camps of Idomeni and Eko Station and involved transferring 8,000-10,000 refugee to
official camps all over Greece. “Greek police move to shut down Idomeni refugee camp”, Aljazeera, 25 May 2016; “Eurozone
unlocks €10.3bn bailout loan for Greece”, The Guardian, 25 May 2016.
 12   J. ZARAGOZA-CRISTIANI

Furthermore, the EU not only succeeded in persuading its NATO allies to continue the
NATO mission in the Aegean Sea to deter human smugglers during 2016 and 2017, but also
increased its capacity building in the western Balkans and expanded its buffering strategy by
signing the EU-Afghanistan readmission agreement, allowing EU member states to deport
an unlimited number of that country’s asylum seekers, and obliging the Afghan government
to receive them.79 Finally, the EU’s southeastern borderland is being physically closed and
delimited on its eastern side, with the building, begun in 2017, of a 511 km ‘security wall’ – 2
m thick and 3 m high, topped by a meter of razor wire – along Turkey’s border with Syria.80
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A fortified EU southeastern borderland with variable border geometry

While the EU has managed to control the migration flows by fortifying the Balkan borders,
it has had to pay a very high price to do so: the western Balkans have been turned into an
ensemble of buffer states, and Greece is ring-fenced and left to deal with thousands of people
stranded all over its territory (see Map 2). Moreover, Turkey has become the world’s largest
refugee-hosting country and is now gatekeeper, with an extraordinary and unprecedented
bargaining power vis-à-vis the EU.81
The refugee crisis has provided new insights for the study of borders, borderlands and
migration control. This migration control cooperation and border reinforcement can be
considered neither a traditional case of outsourcing or externalization of borders, nor simply
a case of creating a buffer zone outside the external limits of the EU. Instead, the southeast-
ern EU borderland is now made of a multiplicity of buffer states, each one fenced off by
different types of fences and border control measures. It has many layers of containment and
includes states with variable border geometries. For refugees, the area starts in Turkey (an
EU candidate), more specifically at the Turkish-Syrian border, which is highly controlled
by the Turkish army and increasingly difficult to cross, with a wall currently being built.
Then, after crossing all of Turkey’s closely controlled territory, refugees head for Greece
(an EU Schengen member) by boat, but not without first overcoming the virtual barrier
in the Aegean represented by the Turkish Coast Guard and the NATO operation, there to
prevent migrants from reaching the Greek islands. Once in Greece, refugees have to first
cross the fenced and highly controlled Greek-FYROM border and then FYROM and Serbian
territories (two EU candidate countries), to enter Croatia (a non-Schengen EU member).
Finally, in order to get out of this borderland, they have to cross the southern fenced borders
of Slovenia or Hungary (both EU Schengen members), the controlled territories of these
countries and either the fenced Austrian-Slovenian border or the Hungarian-Slovakian
border.82 Therefore, this EU borderland is unique; it is not at all a ring of friends outside

79
Frontex, “One year of capacity building in the western Balkans and Turkey”, 27 January 2017, https://frontex.europa.eu/news/
one-year-of-capacity-building-in-the-western-balkans-and-turkey-ojX852; EEAS, “EU-Afghanistan Joint Working Group on
migration”. See the buffering role played by readmission agreements in Dimitrovova, “Remaking Europe’s Borders”, as well as
Herszenhorn and Barigazzi, “EU and Afghanistan announced details”; and ECRE, in an open letter to the European Parliament:
“However, at the same time, we – the undersigned organizations – have deep concerns that the EU plans to return, on the basis of a
back door agreement, thousands of women, men and children to Afghanistan.”https://www.ecre.org/open-letter-the-european-
parliament-must-immediately-address-the-joint-way-forward-agreement-between-the-eu-and-afghanistan-as-a-headline/
80
“Turkey builds more than half of Syrian border wall”, DW, 26 February 2017.
81
Okyay and Zaragoza-Cristiani, “The Leverage of the Gatekeeper”.
82
To understand the complexity of this borderland better, other factors have to be borne in mind, such as the fact that most
of the refugees come from Syria (a former EU ENP neighbour until May 2011), Afghanistan and Iraq. Refugees also have to
deal with natural barriers such as the Aegean Sea, the Evros River, Bulgaria’s Mount Strandzha, the Albanian Šar Mountains
and the northern Pindus mountain range in Greece.
 THE INTERNATIONAL SPECTATOR   13
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Map 2. Refugee camps in the western Balkans and Greece in August 2017.
Source: IOM, https://migration.iom.int/europe/.

the EU’s borders, but rather an EU region made up of EU members and EU candidates
that has been ‘sacrificed’ to the aim of stopping migration. This borderland challenges the
common understanding of the term borderland in different ways.
First, this borderland is no longer peripheral, lying outside and far beyond the EU’s bor-
ders;83 instead it involves the internal as well as the external periphery of the EU. Therefore,
this situation not only adds another level of complexity to the study and delimitation of the
EU’s external borders, but also offers a case, worthy of study, in which the EU’s inner and
outer borderlands84 form a delimited common space.
Second, in this borderland, buffer states are not ENP neighbours but EU candidates
and full EU member states. In other words, the EU core countries have not hesitated to
use several EU members as shields to prevent refugee flows from going north. This has,
on the one hand, made the EU’s external borders more blurred and confusing than ever
while, on the other hand, the clear delimitation of its external limits with walls and fences

83
Laako, “Decolonizing Vision on Borderlands”.
84
Kramsch, “Along the Borgesian Frontier”.
 14   J. ZARAGOZA-CRISTIANI

has paradoxically turned it into a ring-fenced space. In turn, this space is fragmented and
clearly delimited by the reinforced and fenced national borders of all the states within it.
Third, this borderland is exceptional in that the fortification strategy is combined with a
buffering and borderlands logic leading to the fortification of the buffer space.85 Dimitrovova
argued that the ENP could be viewed as an attempt to reconcile two contradictory processes,
namely “border confirming” and “border transcending”.86 In this case, the EU has taken
the combination of these two processes to the extreme by fencing external and internal
borders, while simultaneously creating an unprecedented exchange and interdependence
with its neighbours (especially Turkey), through the promotion of delocalization, transfer,
cooperation and externalization of border control to third countries.
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Indeed, in spite of all these fortification measures, control of the migration flows has only
been effective because of the cooperation to a greater or lesser extent of all the countries
involved. The creation of a multi-state buffer area has established “a complex interdependent
nexus”87 between the states within this borderland, but more so between the EU core and
each buffer state. The refusal to cooperate by any of the buffer states making up part of this
borderland, but above all by Turkey, would inevitably provoke a domino effect, with yet
more arrivals of refugees at the EU core.

Conclusion
Clearly, control of irregular flows (whether refugees or irregular economic migrants) is one
of the EU’s top priorities. As a result, in order to stop them, the EU has not hesitated to fall
back on “the end justifying the means”.
Therefore, the refugee crisis has unveiled a latent certainty within the literature studying
EU borders: the shape and characteristics of the EU’s borders depend on the type and level
of threats they have to deal with, and on the measures the EU has or has not been able to
implement to tackle them. More specifically, it is necessary to understand factors such as the
size of the irregular flows, the ways in which the EU is trying to control them, and whether
or not it is succeeding in doing so, to understand, describe and define the characteristics
and shape of the EU’s external borders.
Irregular migration flows are a decisive factor in forming and reshaping the EU periph-
eries, on the one hand, and the power relations between the EU and the countries in those
peripheries, on the other. As seen, a country’s status with respect to the EU (member,
Schengen member, non-member, candidate, etc) does not matter; what matters is its role
in tackling migration. To tackle migration, the EU core has not hesitated to reconfigure the
Balkan region and create a periphery with countries of different EU status, including full
EU member states. Moreover, within this buffer zone each country plays a role in the EU’s
strategy to stop migration, a role that in turn gives that country more or less power. In other
words, the refugee crisis has reconfigured the power relations between the EU and each
of these countries. This is why the refugee crisis has granted so much bargaining power to
Turkey, while taking it away from Greece.

85
Bialasiewicz, “Off-shoring and out-sourcing”.
86
Dimitrovova (“Remaking Europe’s Borders”) argues that ‘border confirming’ is about confirming border areas of demarcation
and division, in which borders are conceived as boundary lines, frontier zones or barriers that protect the European Union
and its citizens. ‘Border transcending’ challenges open EU borders and transform the EU’s external boundaries into zones
of interactions, opportunities and exchanges.
87
Novak, “The Flexible Territoriality of Borders”.
 THE INTERNATIONAL SPECTATOR   15

While the refugee flows show that, though the concept of Fortress Europe was little
more than an illusion that the EU wanted to believe in for more than a decade, the EU’s
response to the flows has been the construction of an even more colossal fortification strat-
egy involving an extraordinary amount of resources, unimaginable before the beginning
of the crisis. Indeed, former discussions about where the EU borders were and how they
could be described, seem far less complex today, given the current scenario. Borders have
now been reinforced and extended after a costly and difficult deal with Turkey; at the same
time as the western Balkans have been turned into a vast buffer zone containing physical
constraints of all kinds; and Greece has been fenced off by its neighbours and left to struggle
to manage the tens of thousands of refugees stranded in its territory.
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Yet, the pillars of this fortified borderland may well be grounded in quicksand. The
non-ending war in Syria, the political instability in Turkey and its extraordinary bargaining
power with respect to the EU, the complex situation in Greece, and the continuous divi-
sions and tensions among Balkan countries, are just some of the factors that could cause
it to collapse.
The EU has interpreted the refugee crisis not as the failure of both Fortress Europe and
the EU externalization strategy, but as the result of insufficient fortification and buffer-
ing strategies. Consequently, instead of looking for a more comprehensive solution, it has
combined the two failed strategies. Time will tell whether this new strategy deserves to be
replicated, as the EU is already trying to do in Libya, or whether it is merely a bigger and
more catastrophic version of the two that failed.

Acknowledgements
For constructive comments on previous versions of the article, the author would like to thank Raffaella
A. Del Sarto and two anonymous reviewers. Research for this article was carried out in the frame-
work of the research project ‘BORDERLANDS: Boundaries, Governance and Power in the European
Union’s Relations with North Africa and the Middle East’, funded by the European Research Council
(ERC) under Grant Agreement Number 263277. The project is hosted at the European University
Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, and directed by Raffaella A. Del Sarto.

Notes on Contributor
Jonathan Zaragoza-Cristiani is Research Associate for the Borderlands Project, Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence.

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