Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-13-Speech-1-127"
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"en.20030113.7.1-127"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to start by congratulating Mr Pirker on the excellent report he has presented us with and also the Commission for its initiative, the quality of which has already been emphasised and which, this time, will certainly also win the support of my friend, Mr Christian von Boetticher. The signing in 1990 of the Schengen Agreement and the abolition of controls at national borders have made controls at the external borders even more important in preventing threats to our citizens’ security from entering the Community area.
The growing threats from terrorism, organised crime, the trafficking in human beings and from drugs and illegal immigration have moved to the top of our political agenda and have become a core concern of our citizens. It is a matter for some regret, however, that our external borders continue to constitute a weak link in the overall system, which endangers not only the effective protection of internal security but also the full implementation of the principle of free movement. This situation takes on even more significance as a result of enlargement, when the new Member States will gradually take over the task of ensuring security at the external borders, with a considerable proportion of responsibility being transferred to those countries.
It is therefore crucial for the Union to adopt coherent measures on security at its borders, without infringing Member States’ own competences, but helping to increase the effectiveness of this protection. I agree with the rapporteur, Mr Pirker, that it is vital to develop a common policy of control for our current and future external borders, which requires common standards to be established for external border management, a common guideline and a common core curriculum for the officials concerned, a European Staff College for senior officials, priority for funding projects for establishing common standards, a jointly-funded European Corps of Border Guards, consisting of specialist units, which would, in an emergency and at the request of the Member States, be temporarily seconded to assist national authorities at vulnerable sections of the EU’s external borders and in crisis situations.
These common measures must also contribute to solving problems that we are seeing today, in the level of transposition of the Schengen acquis at the current external borders with regard to the type and practices of border control, which differ between land and sea borders, with regard to who is responsible for border management, which varies from Member State to Member State, even resulting, in some cases, in the duplication of competences and, finally, with regard to the use of different technologies that are sometimes incompatible and hamper the achievement of a uniformly high level of security.
I shall conclude by repeating the words of Commissioner António Vitorino: this concern to better manage our external borders must contribute to increasing internal security in the Union and in the Member States."@en1
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