Time-Immemorial
Restricted
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/article1654850.ece
Europe blocks Balkans with razor wire
Bojan Pancevski Gevgelija, Macedonia Published: 10 January 2016
Comment (73) Print
Police confront anti-immigration protesters in Cologne yesterday (Wolfgang Rattay) Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
MACEDONIA is building a 10ft-high razor-wire fence along its border with Greece with EU help to try to stop hundreds of thousands of migrants travelling through the Balkans into Europe.
News of the move came as authorities in the German city of Cologne said the majority of people suspected of carrying out mass sex attacks on New Year’s Eve were illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. Police said 379 offences had been committed, 150 of them sexual assaults.
Armed border guards from six of the European Union’s eastern members are helping Macedonia, a non-EU member, to shore up its frontier against Greece, a member not just of the EU but also of its borderless Schengen zone.
The fence, due to be completed within the next few weeks, is modelled on one erected by Hungary on its own southern border in August.
Its construction has been prompted by the failure of Turkey