Examination of Witnesses (Questions 218-219)
General Ilkka Laitinen, Mr Jozsef Bali, Ms Mari Kalliala,
Mr Richard Ares, Mr Sakari Vuorensola and Mr Graham Leese
23 OCTOBER 2007
Q218 Chairman: Again, I really want to
thank our hosts very much indeed for the presentations this morning,
they were extremely useful. Thank you very much for giving us
copies of the slides. We have given you quite a long list of questions
that we want to ask this afternoon, some of which are probably
duplicated by the discussions we had this morning. Can I start
off with the first question?
General Laitinen: Certainly.
Q219 Chairman: This is really a general
question about the assessment of the work of Frontex so far. I
think this gets on to evaluation. I would like your answer to
whether Frontex is actually keeping up with your expectations.
I think Lord Jopling will later come in with a question about
your tasks but there is one particular task that I am interested
in and that is people smuggling. Could you give us some assessment
of how far you have been able to help control and catch people
smugglers? Really it is your assessment of where you have got
to so far. This is all on the record but if at any point you want
to go off the record that is perfectly acceptable, although I
like to keep that as limited as possible.
General Laitinen: Certainly. Thank you very
much, my Lord Chairman, for the questions you have provided. First
of all, I have to say I found them appropriate and straight to
the point. If I may start with a basic assessment of the activities
of Frontex so far. We have to bear in mind that we are still at
an initial stage. We have only been in existence for two years,
a little bit more, which is a relatively short period of time
for a European agency. More particularly on the achievements,
the basic structures, the basic procedures, the modus operandi
of the operational co-ordinator at the European level, which is
called Frontex, is in place. We have created the structure and
we know what to do. My assessment is we are doing the things that
the Regulation stipulates that Frontex should do in a balanced
and appropriate way. We have arranged almost 40 joint operations
so far. If I may assess the results of these operations they can
be put in three categories. The first one is excellent, the second
is satisfactory and the third is promising. On the Canary Islands'
operations between 2006 and 2007 we have witnessed a decrease
of almost 70% and I consider that is an excellent result.
|
