FT.com / Europe - Germans warn of illegal migration

FT.com / Europe - Germans warn of illegal migration

Germans warn of illegal migration
By Hugh Williamson in Berlin and Peter Wise in Lisbon

Published: December 20 2007 18:30 | Last updated: December 20 2007 18:30

Senior German politicians and police officials said unresolved security problems could mean increased crime and illegal immigration following Friday’s enlargement of the European Union’s Schengen border-free zone.

Josef Scheuring, head of the GdP German police trade union, said on Thursday: “Germany is not well prepared for this [enlargement] process” in which people in Poland, the Czech Republic, six other eastern European countries and Malta today gain passport-free travel to most of the EU.

He said the enlargement of the borderless zone – the largest in the EU’s history – should have been postponed until the “Schengen Information System II”, the latest version of an EU cross-border police database, was operational. The current SIS system was overloaded, he said, noting that under original plans the new system was to have been introduced ahead of the zone’s enlargement. This was now unlikely before late next year, he added.

Wolfgang Bosbach, a Christian Democrat security policy expert and close ally of Angela Merkel, chancellor, said he feared “people smuggling gangs from Ukraine and Belarus will become much more active”. There were also “significant weaknesses” in security provisions on the zone’s new eastern borders, and in co-operation between national police forces, he said

Ms Merkel, Donald Tusk, Polish prime minister, and Mirek Topolanek, Czech prime minister, are due to hold a ceremony this morning in Zittau, south-east Germany, near the border with its two eastern neighbours. The Schengen zone – named after the Luxembourg village where a first agreement on passport-free travel was signed in 1985 – will expand to include 24 countries. Britain and Ireland stay outside.

Germany’s interior ministry said concerns over the SIS database – which contains information on wanted people, passports, stolen cars and firearms – were “un-founded”, since an interim solution, known as SISone4all and including the nine new Schengen members, had been introduced. The European Commission had made repeated security checks of the system, the ministry added.

Portugal, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, on Thursday claimed credit for developing the SISone4all system, arguing the Schengen enlargement would have been delayed if Lisbon had not intervened. Rui Pereira, Portugal’s internal affairs minister, told the Financial Times this was a “small Christmas present” to the EU. He said the EU had been resigned to delaying the enlargement of the Schengen area from the December 2007 deadline, after the Commission announced in September 2006 that SIS II would not be ready in time. Critical Software, a Portuguese company, took only seven months, at a cost of less than €500,000 to develop the interim database, based on adapting Portugal’s national police database so it could be easily adopted by other countries, Mr Pereira said.

Polish officials said on Thursday the existing database was sufficient to monitor border crossings properly.

José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, who will also attend the Zittau ceremony,brushed aside worries over crime and illegal migration. “Europe will become more secure than in the past,” he wrote in a German newspaper.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007