What are the borders of EU and what are the limits of human suffering?

This week in the field unfortunately brought no changes for the better. People on the move we have met are growing ever more desperate. On the one hand, they are exhausted from constant pressures and violence they are subjected to at the EU external borders, and on the other hand their financial situation is dire. This is partly because they are subjected to forced relocations in regular police raids from Serbia’s northern borders with Hungary, Croatia and Romania, all the way south to Preševo, near the border with North Macedonia. In order to return to the north, they need a minimum of 200 euros for transportation (mostly taxi as they are usually not allowed to board busses or trains). Some of the refugees we spoke to had been forcibly relocated for several times already, and they feel helpless and robbed because of that.

It’s been years now that we hear about people who had reached the border between Hungary and Austria, and then forcibly returned to Serbia without any proper processing of their cases.

Examples like these point out to questions of what exactly are border of the European Union and when will the member states decide to which human beings apply human rights, and who is exempt from them? What are the limits of human suffering after which someone is finally perceived as a human being on your country’s territory worthy of receiving assistance? The answer to these questions should be universally applied – all people on a EU member states’ (and Serbia’s) territory should be granted human rights, but in reality this is not the case.

Paradoxically, at the moment the EU has at the same time been expanding and shrinking regardless of its clear borders. So on one hand it is expanding its borders by deploying Frontex forces and members of states’ border police to the borders of non-EU countries, while on the other hand it is scanning its territory closely in search of refugees to be pushed back outside EU.

At the end, when people on the move share with us the struggles they had been through, there is a lingering question in the field with a unfavorable answer: “Why are they doing this to us and will they stop soon?”

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This field report is prepared within the Project "Protecting Civic Space – Regional Civil Society Development Hub" financed by Sida and implemented by BCSDN".

The content of this document, and the information and views presented do not represent the official positions and opinions of Sida and BCSDN. Responsibility for the information and views expressed in this document lies entirely with the author.