European Commission steps up pressure on member states

The European Commission yesterday launched a new initiative to exert more pressure on member states to deploy the necessary assets to its EU border control agency, Frontex, in order to strengthen the anti-illegal migration patrols in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

European Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini's spokesman, Friso Roscam Abbing, said the Commission wants to see promises made earlier this year by member states translated into concrete action.

"In view of the Commission's decision that by the beginning of next year both patrol missions will be switched onto a permanent basis, Mr Frattini is demanding all the 27 member states to sign an individual memorandum of understanding with Frontex detailing the amount of boats, helicopters and personnel they will be deploying to these missions and how."

The Commission is hoping such individual agreements between member states and Frontex will settle the issue on the lack of assets at the disposal of the EU border agency.

Although Frontex is coordinating two separate missions, Hera III in the Atlantic and Nautilus II in the Mediterranean, their effectiveness are still considered to be minimal due to the lack of resources dedicated by member states.

Mr Riscam Abbing said that although the virtual "tool box" containing pledges made by members states towards Frontex contains 525 pieces of border control and border surveillance equipment, these need to be deployed in reality.

"A very important decision has been taken recently that as of January 1, 2008 the patrols in the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic Ocean will become permanent. Within this context, it is clear we need more member states to participate because we can't have one or two member states only doing permanent controls.

"Every vessel would need to go back after a maximum of 10 to 14 days for obvious reasons and then be replaced by another boat. The same applied to helicopters, planes and so on. So we will definitely need more concrete input," he said.

Nautilus II, the anti-illegal immigration patrol mission monitoring the strait between Sicily, Malta and Libya, started operations on June 25 and is expected to run until the end of August.

Malta is contributing the major assets to this operation. Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Greece are also participating although on a much smaller scale.