I wonder how much taxpayer money is wasted "protecting" national borders
Well, its actually more corrupt than that. You can start by visiting frontexfiles (
https://frontexfiles.eu/en.html). The so called wonderful, progressive solution to the migrant crisis just created a behemoth of an agency ripe for military hardware specialists to scam the EU taxpayer via (of course) the EU policy revolving door meaning that they can lobby MEPs and EU officials to procure guns for obscene prices , such is the obscurity of the EU procurement processes for police and military hardware and personel.
In general, the whole issue suffers from principle-agent dilemma, which is that the Frontex and other border guard agencies,
as well as countries like Morrocco essentially receiving bribes to cooperate know that they are getting funding because of the Migration issue remaining salient in
European political discourse, so they have zero incentive to actually find solutions for it. Gotta keep that money tap of big EU note printer going ya know?
I don't want to hear right-wing gammons ever again complain about socialist governments spending too much money on welfare. There are more than enough cases of their favorite policy hobby horses like migration being a massive waste of money to deliberately not solve an issue but rather steadily control the flow of the issue. We could use a bit more stick and a bit less carrott for example, that's the "realist" approach to tackling a country like Morrocco , but far too many people stand to lose too much money. Hell the N-VA here in Belgium were caught smuggling illegals in the country. Thinking the political Right in Europe don't benefit from this entire narrative is naive. The sad thing is you get unhinged hicks in rural Austria who would vote Green but drink the Kool-Aid and think the criminal Kurz is the solution to their problems.
