Europe hopes barbed wire will keep migrants out. It won’t

When Spain first surrounded Ceuta and Melilla, its North African exclaves, in barbed wire in 1993 and 1996, few suspected the practice would catch on. The 1990s were, after all, an optimistic time in Europe, as the Berlin Wall came down. Alas, things have been changing. Between 2014 and 2023, the total length of border fences in the EU rose from 315 to 2,163km. Another 245km will go up this year.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Get off the fence”

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