Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-23-Speech-3-212"
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"en.20080423.20.3-212"2
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"Mr President, the main factor that attracts illegal immigrants today is illegal work.
At present, 18 aircraft, 20 helicopters and 105 vessels are made available by the Member States on a voluntary basis. For its part, Frontex provides the human resources needed to help the Member States to prepare and evaluate the maritime operations. In its evaluation report on Frontex, the Commission recommended that the potential of CRATE and the commitments made by the Member States should be exploited to the full to ensure the availability of the necessary equipment for sea border operations.
The Frontex agency must report regularly to the European institutions on the actual use made of the equipment and the extent to which this use is adequate in relation to the needs, and it must inform them about a future mechanism to ensure the availability of the equipment offered by the Member States. The agency could also increase the potential of CRATE by acquiring or leasing its own technical equipment.
Through these efforts, the Member States and Frontex will help to reduce, as far as possible, the disappearance at sea of those who to reach Europe in makeshift vessels. As a result, the Commission welcomes the bilateral agreement between Spain and the West African states, as well as the contacts between Italy and Malta and Libya. To date, the contacts with Libya have not had the desired result; all the more reason to pursue them.
In its report on the future development of Frontex, the Commission emphasised that cooperation with third countries is a key element in improving the joint operations carried out by the agency in the long term. As such, consideration should be given to whether Frontex should have the possibility of carrying out pilot projects with third countries as beneficiaries. Of course, the agency must ensure coherence between its activities and the overall framework of the Union’s external policy.
Such projects could significantly strengthen the impact of cooperation launched under the current working arrangements, where the latter can serve to identify concrete needs for capacity building with regard to border management in specific third countries.
Finally, the Commission sees 2008 as a test year. Frontex has a larger overall budget, the CRATE database is fully operational and the rapid intervention teams are in place. We will of course evaluate the results of these measures and, where necessary, it may be appropriate to explore other options, such as the establishment of a European border surveillance system, as indicated in the Commission’s evaluation report.
That is the information I wanted to pass on to you today and I look forward to listening to the comments here in this House concerning these difficult problems.
Migrants will continue to come to Europe as long as they believe that the financial benefits they can gain from working illegally outweigh the risks of being arrested by European law enforcement bodies.
We need a common will at European level to implement an effective strategy against illegal work. That is the key to this strategy and it depends on us, on the Member States and on our common political will. This is the context surrounding the Commission proposal on sanctions for those who employ third-country nationals residing illegally in the European Union, which is currently being examined by this Parliament and by the Council.
This proposal seeks to ensure that all the Member States adopt preventive measures and similar sanctions and actually apply them in the fight against illegal work.
I would like to encourage Parliament to continue its examination of this proposal so that we can establish a Community instrument that requires the Member States to take all the necessary measures to ensure that the rule of law is respected throughout the European Union.
Having said that, I do not want to underestimate the challenges posed by illegal immigration across the European Union’s external borders. It is very likely that this year, too, many people from the African continent will be tempted to come to the EU by sea: some will come individually, some will come in small groups and others will be exploited by criminal organisations demanding large sums of money to bring them to Europe.
Considerable efforts have been made at European level to provide the Member States with the financial support needed in 2008. The budget of the Frontex agency has practically doubled in 2008 compared with 2007. This year it totals EUR 70 million, including more than EUR 31 million for operations at the EU’s maritime borders.
As regards the operations in these high-risk zones, Frontex has organised four large-scale operations: Poseidon, Hermes, Nautilus and Hera. The information on their exact dates and duration is not yet in the public domain but, thanks to the increase in funding, they will last longer than they did in 2007.
It is also important to point out that an agreement has been reached between the Member States and Frontex on the procedures and conditions for using the technical equipment contained in the Central Record of Available Technical Equipment (CRATE) database."@en1
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