Amid heightened political tensions, formidable border fences are now becoming the norm across Europe. On November 2, Poland's defense minister announced his country's 210-kilometer boundary with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave would be sealed off with the continent's latest border fence.
Dividing Lines: Europe's New Border Fences
Hungarian prisoners attach razor wire to the top of a fence on the border with Serbia in Roszke, southern Hungary, on October 28.
The newly heightened fence was first constructed in 2015 amid a wave of migrants from the Middle East attempting to enter the European Union.
A Polish border guard patrols alongside a massive new barrier that was built on the country’s border with Belarus.
This fence was completed in June after Middle Eastern migrants were allegedly "funneled" through Belarus and toward its borders with the EU, apparently as a way to pressure Brussels over sanctions.
Lithuania's 4-meter-high border fence with Belarus, photographed in November 2021.
European countries have erected more than 1,000 kilometers of border barriers over the past 30 years, with most of those fences being built since the 2015 migrant crisis.
Bulgarian border police are photographed on September 2 near a fence on their country’s border with Turkey.
Construction of this border barrier began in 2014 as what became known as the migrant crisis was just beginning. Turkey’s ambassador to Bulgaria at the time criticized the fence and what he called the "political message" it sent.
Security cameras and rolls of razor wire top a fence where the borders with Poland, Lithuania, and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave meet. The photo was taken from near the Polish village of Zerdziny in July.
Macedonian soldiers patrol inside razor-wire fences on the border between Macedonia and Greece in July 2019.
Workers in Lithuania install poles for a border fence with Russia in June 2017.
The border fence separating Spain’s tiny North African territory of Ceuta from Morocco, as photographed in June 2018.
The fence is made up of two 6-meter-high barriers topped with barbed wire. An array of noise and movement sensors supplement the hundreds of police who patrol the barrier.
A Hungarian police van patrols the Hungary-Serbia border, which was fortified by a second fence, near the Hungarian village of Gara in March 2017.
According to a recent report from Statista, more than half of EU member states now have border barriers in place.