Frontex Executive Director Mr Ilkka Laitinen has accepted the invitation to visit France on 20 March. The occasion of the visit, taking place in Marseille, will be the demonstration of French means used for prevention of illegal migration at sea.
“I am really looking forward to this visit as it will enable me to see in practice some of the technical equipment that can be used in future Frontex coordinated operations”, Mr Laitinen says on the eve of the visit.
France is one of the countries that made numerous offers for the so called CRATE, being Centralised Records of Available Technical Equipment for control and surveillance of external borders.
The task to set up and keep these records is stipulated by Article 7 of the Regulation 2007/2004 establishing Frontex. Moreover, the Conclusions of the European Council of 14 -15 December 2006 invited Frontex to finalise the work on these records. The CRATE contains equipment belonging to Member States, which they, on a voluntary basis and upon a request from another Member State, are willing to put at the disposal of that Member State. These means will always be deployed temporarily. The necessity for using the equipment will follow from an analysis of operational needs and risks carried out by Frontex.
So far, technical means needed for individual operations coordinated by Frontex were always offered by the Member States on an ad hoc basis, following a Frontex request. Once created, these records will facilitate the operations, enabling faster deployment and more extensive technical support.
“So far, we have received offers for the CRATE from 17 Member States. They include 19 aircrafts, 24 helicopters, 107 vessels and a lot of other technical equipment for border control and surveillance, such as forgery detection kits, UV lights or heart beat detectors,“ Frontex Executive Director specified. “These are very satisfactory numbers, especially those coming from France and Italy. However, we still hope for more offers to be made in the near future.”
Technical equipment for control and surveillance is deployed in many Frontex operations at all parts of the external border, being it air, land or sea border. The added value of having the centralised records will be even strengthened by the establishment of the FJSTs (Frontex Joint Support Teams) and RABITs (Rapid Border Intervention Teams). Both these proposals foresee the creation of a pool of experts from the Member States, trained by Frontex, that could be deployed in joint operations, either in regular operations planned on the basis of Frontex risk analysis (FJSTs) or in urgent and exceptional situations (RABITs). This pool will be composed of experts and expert teams skilled in individual aspects of border control and with specific geographically related knowledge.