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Malta enters Schengen amid Frontex concerns
By MaltaMedia News
Dec 21, 2007 - 9:05:24 AM
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On Friday at midnight, Malta officially entered the Schengen zone together with another eight former Communist states, thus ending sea and land border controls between the latter and 15 other Schengen area nations.
However Frontex executive director Ilkka Laitinen told AFP that illegal immigration may be the price Europe will pay following the expansion of the Schengen zone. "What is our concern in terms of Schengen is that we are going to lose a very effective instrument to fight illegal immigration."
Corruption along the zone's 5,000 kilometre-plus eastern frontier with Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and northern Balkan states is "a persisting and permanent risk" for Schengen border security,
eubusiness.com reported Laitinen as saying.
He said the widespread use of highly reliable biometric identity instruments could spark "stronger attempts to blackmail or corrupt law enforcement" officials by criminal organisations smuggling people and goods into the zone.
Meanwhile, Austria's chancellor Gusenbauer and Slovakia's prime minister Fico, who sawed through a red and white frontier barrier in symbolic preparation for the nine new countries joining the EU's border-free zone on Thursday, acknowledged that worries such as crime exist, but dismissed them.
On the other hand on Thursday,
Reuters quoted German police union chief Konrad Freiberg saying, "We must conclude that there will be more property crime in the border area. Also, the question of people trafficking will become acute.”
© Copyright 2007 by MaltaMedia.com
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Latest update:
Dec 21, 2007 - 5:40:54 PM CET
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