LONDON — The European Union was supposed to be about breaking down borders and barriers. But critics say that message appears to have been lost on Hungary, which drew international condemnation this week for its government’s plans to erect a fence along the Serbian border to keep out migrants.
“We don’t want to live in an Auschwitz,” Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s prime minister, said on state television on Thursday, a day after Hungary unveiled a proposal to build the 13-foot-high fence along its 109-mile southern border with Serbia. Mr. Vucic said building walls and fences was a misguided way to deter the tens of thousands of asylum seekers, buffeted by war and conflict in Syria, Africa and elsewhere, who are determined to find refuge in the Union and have increasingly sought entry through the western Balkans.
The plans to build a fence have touched a nerve in Europe, where debate is raging over how to handle the soaring numbers of migrants and as far-right parties in Britain, France, Greece and elsewhere have gained popularity and votes by railing against immigrants.
The plan has attracted particular ire in Serbia, which has been undertaking tough political and economic changes in hopes of joining the European Union after years of isolation from the West following the bloody Balkan wars of the 1990s.
The plan for the fence — coming from Hungary, a former Communist country that was itself once behind the Iron Curtain — was also criticized by the United Nations refugee agency and the European Union. “We have only just torn down walls in Europe; we should not be putting them up,” said Natasha Bertaud, a spokeswoman for the European Commission. While member countries have the right to secure their borders, Ms. Bertaud emphasized that they could not flout international law by, for example, turning away migrants who are entitled to protection.
Nevertheless, Hungary has insisted that building the fence is legally within its rights, and that it is necessary to help it meet a serious migration challenge. Last year, the country received 41,215 applications for asylum, including 20,910 from citizens of Kosovo, 8,560 from Afghanistan and 6,630 from Syria, according to data from Eurostat. That was 7 percent of the total asylum applications received by the 28 members of the European Union.
It is unclear whether the criticism will deter Viktor Orban, Hungary’s populist prime minister, whom Washington and Brussels have accused of employing authoritarian tactics. Mr. Orban is one of Europe’s most outspoken critics of illegal immigration, linking immigrants to terrorism and warning that they are undermining Hungarians’ livelihoods.
The Hungarian government announced plans in April for a public consultation on immigration, including sending a questionnaire to eight million citizens ages 18 and over asking whether mismanagement of the immigration issue by Brussels had increased terrorism and whether they would support detaining immigrants who entered the country illegally at their own expense. That provoked an angry reaction from some members of the European Parliament. Cecilia Wikström, a liberal member from Sweden, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Orban was transforming Hungary into a “mini-Russia.”
Other countries have tried physical restraints to halt migrants. Bulgaria, which has seen an influx of migrants along its border with Turkey, recently announced plans to extend a 20-mile-long fence along the border, saying it had already helped reduce the number of immigrants entering the country.
Walls have also been built in some countries to keep even European citizens away. In 2010, a village in eastern Slovakia came under fire after it used public money to build a 164-yard-long concrete barrier to separate a Roma camp from the neatly manicured homes of local residents, who complained that the Roma were stealing fruits and vegetables.
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