First land border RABITs’ exercise is taking place these days at the border between Slovenia and Croatia. Border Guards from 20 Member States are conducting a real-life border surveillance and border checks as a part of the fictional scenario developed for this exercise. They are deployed to two border crossing points and three green border areas.
Region selected for the exercise lies on so called “Balkan Route”, one of major routes of illegal migration towards the European Union. The aim of this field exercise is not only testing the deployment procedures but also testing possibilities of reinforcement of a Member State authority response capacity in exceptional situations. This simulation is the first of a series that will take place in 2008. Their aim is to keep good operational condition of RABITs in case of any possible crisis at the external borders of the EU Member States.
Officers participating in this first 2008 exercise are experts in border checks, forged and falsified documents, green border surveillance as well as in so called second line interviews of third country nationals. They come from law enforcement bodies of: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.
The concept of Rapid Border Intervention Teams was introduced by the Regulation (EC) 863/2007 consisting in creation of a pool of experts from the Member States, trained by Frontex, that could be deployed in urgent and exceptional situations. This pool is composed of experts and expert teams skilled in particular aspects of border control and with specific geographically related knowledge.