Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
General Ilkka Laitinen, Mr Jozsef Bali, Ms Mari Kalliala,
Mr Richard Ares, Mr Sakari Vuorensola and Mr Graham Leese
23 OCTOBER 2007
Q240 Earl of Listowel: Briefly, in
terms of staff support, does this "permanent emergency"
that you have described in any way undermine the amount of support
staff you receive in terms of supervision, in mentoring, in management?
If you would not mind being very brief in your answer, or perhaps
writing to the Committee on that point, that would be helpful.
Then I would like to go on to the next question.
General Laitinen: I can provide some written
evidence for you.
Chairman: That would be very helpful.
Q241 Earl of Listowel: Thank you
very much. How many regional centres does Frontex have? How are
they staffed and where are they located, please?
General Laitinen: For the time being we do not
have any specialised branches anywhere. The entire staff of Frontex
are at the headquarters here in Warsaw. We have a plan to deploy
an official to Brussels to serve our interests vis-a"-vis
the European institutions in the near future but he or she will
be the only ex-pat of the agency.
Q242 Baroness Henig: Hypothetically,
if there was somebody based in Brussels their salary then should
be determined by the cost of living in Brussels, not the cost
of living in Warsaw. Would that happen or not?
General Laitinen: That would be the case.
Q243 Baroness Henig: So you could
have people in regional operational centres earning more because
of where they are based than in the headquarters of Frontex?
General Laitinen: Yes, that is a fact.
Chairman: A familiar situation to some of us!
Q244 Lord Harrison: General Laitinen,
a point of clarification and then a question. I know that you
will give me a full answer and not a three-quarters one according
to the coefficient rule you were talking about earlier. You said
that the United Kingdom is an active participant in the work that
is being done in joint operations but you said it increased bureaucracy
in terms of the single applications that have to be made to the
Management Board. So, on the one hand, it is doing well in terms
of co-operating and working despite being outside or of a semi-detached
status but, on the other hand, it is increasing bureaucracy which
is wasteful of resources. That is a yes or no really.
General Laitinen: This is the will of the lawmakers.
Q245 Lord Harrison: Thank you.
General Laitinen: The reason is that the UK
does not fully implement the Schengen acquis and we can see the
consequences in the Regulation establishing Frontex, which is
a subject for the Schengen System. What I have to say in addition
to what I said on the UK's participation is that the Management
Board has stretched its flexibility to find as smooth and flexible
a procedure to meet the requirement of case-by-case decisions
on each particular joint operation where UK participation is desired,
including the justification that is also desired.
Q246 Lord Harrison: That was the
full answer that I was inviting. I would like to ask you this
question: in response to the Chairman earlier when he asked about
trafficking you said that was an objective but not a function
of Frontex, and we thoroughly understood that, but inevitably
in the work that you do in co-ordinating the 27 Member States
there must be times when you feel you want to trespass beyond
the established role of Frontex. I had in mind, for instance,
when you are doing sea operations, that if there is a disastrous
situation at sea which you come across you cannot be like the
commercial cameraman or journalist who simply takes the photo,
you would feel you would have to intervene and effect a sea rescue.
Is that the case? What are the guidelines for you in stretching
beyond what might be understood to be the established role of
Frontex?
General Laitinen: I have a reference to the
maritime operations, certain maritime search and rescue operations,
vis-a"-vis the border surveillance on that. We consider border
control as an instrument which can be used for different purposes.
Managing migration flows is one of those, promoting bona fide
travel, making it as difficult as possible for the facilitators
and irregular migrants to cross borders is one objective. This
is not entirely aligned with the existing structure within the
European Union by defining different pillars. I would say that
border control is a cross-pillar phenomenon which serves all three
pillars whereas the legal basis of the Frontex Regulation is within
the first pillar. This is quite a persistent question and dilemma
for us to find an appropriate way between these more or less artificial
pillars within the Community. Fighting organised crime is one
thing we come across with these issues and it can be stated it
is not a function or task of Frontex but in practice in the Member
States and also at the European level we have to work towards
that objective. It is not a task but it is an objective. The same
applies to the maritime operations. We cannot label our operation
to be a maritime search and rescue operation because that is beyond
our remit. It is not even a remit of the European Union, it is
part of the international maritime law. Everybody knows a coastguard
vessel or a Navy vessel, whoever navigates in the sea for whatever
purpose, has to take action if people are in distress. Unfortunately,
particularly in the central Mediterranean, this is the main modus
operandi of the human smugglers and the facilitators, to make
the journey become a search and rescue operation which guarantees
reception and a way to the closest safe haven. This is a hard
game. This is a very dramatic game which is going on. We feel
obliged to perform these duties even if when reading the Regulation
and implementing the law it is not clearly written and could be
controversial. It belongs to the performance.
Q247 Lord Jopling: Can I just follow
that last point up before I move on. I went to an extraordinary
place in Stavanger in Norway in May where they co-ordinate rescue
at sea and other maritime and terrestrial problems. The day before
I was there, there had been a local problem in Norway and when
we were there they got a message that there was a ship 200 miles
off Djibouti in the Indian Ocean drifting with no fuel and no
food and they organised a rescue operation. They do that worldwide,
it is the most extraordinary place. Do you have any relations
with that organisation?
General Laitinen: No, we do not.
Q248 Lord Jopling: The next question
is with regard to co-ordinating joint operations. You have said
a good deal about this, particularly the problem of making sure
that all of the states concerned want to co-operate. You have
said a good deal on that but do you want to add anything?
General Laitinen: No, I think we have covered
and returned to this issue many times.
Q249 Lord Jopling: Okay. The next
one is that we have been told that Frontex operations respond
to an International Co-ordination Centre which is established
for the particular joint operations and manned by a Joint Co-ordination
Board with representatives of all national contingents participating
in the operation and Frontex. Could you tell us more about this.
What is the Board? Who is on it, who is the Chairman of it? How
are decisions taken? Where is the ICC located and how is it funded?
Just explain to us the structure of those two organisations.
General Laitinen: We should not speak about
organisations in this regard. It is how we are arranging joint
operations. If we take Warsaw first, it is a customary procedure
in Warsaw that we activate our Frontex operational centre here
where all the flows of information come, the daily reports and
so on. That centre, which is still at the initial stage but functions,
can serve different operations if they are going on at the same
time. There is a channel and a flow of information to the operational
theatre, if I may use that phrase, and each operation has a part
of that structure in place which contains the Co-ordination Centre
which has a direct link to the Frontex operational centre here.
The leader of this centre is a representative of the host country
as our joint operations are always led by a Member State and that
role belongs to the officer of that Member State. Quite often
those Member States, in particular in the bigger operations, who
have provided and deployed main assets to those operations also
deploy an expert to this Co-ordination Centre where they jointly
manage the performance of these operations. Quite often in these
bigger operations one officer from Frontex is deployed to this
Co-ordination Centre to safeguard our interests that the operational
plan is fully respected and also the financial issues which might
occur in the course of this operation. There is no fixed institution
or organisation, it is just a way of managing joint operations
where some different words have been used, "committees"
or "boards" or whatever. It is a matter of managing
joint operations.
Q250 Baroness Henig: This goes back
to sea operations, a different aspect of sea rescue. Some witnesses
who have given evidence to us highlighted a reluctance on the
part of some Member States either to commit national assets for
Frontex operations or to activate those assets that are already
in play. The reason given to us, particularly by a Member of the
European Parliament, was that there were not clear rules as to
where the people intercepted by EU joint operations at sea were
to be disembarked and the fear that the particular nation that
intercepted these people then had to take these people back to
their own country. I wonder whether you could comment on this
and whether directions or guidelines have been given in relation
to disembarkation in Frontex operations undertaken thus far.
General Laitinen: Thank you very much for that
question. I have witnessed discussions on this issue at different
levels but when it comes to the planning and implementation of
a joint operation I have not come across an issue which is a critical
point for the Member States to determine whether to deploy an
asset or not. It is more a question about a Member State finding
an appropriate allocation for their own limited resources. Can
they afford to give an aircraft, helicopter or vessel for an operation
for this period of time. I do agree that at a certain level there
have been some political tensions in determining who is in charge
and some criticism of whether existing laws and rules are fair.
I am not the person who can say this or that on this issue. What
I can say is it has not been a major factor for a Member State
in determining whether to participate with technical equipment
in an operation or not.
Q251 Baroness Henig: Are you then
saying that formally no directions or guidelines have been given
but that possibly informally this might be an issue? Is that what
you are saying?
General Laitinen: To my understanding the rules
are quite clear. Another question is who considers them to be
fair or appropriate. For us, the rules are clear: not only determining
what is the state of play if we are acting in territorial waters
or international waters but is it a real border control situation
or a maritime search and rescue operation. The rules are clear.
There is room for clarifying some application of these rules but
in general terms the rules exist. It is a matter of a difference
of interpretation.
Q252 Baroness Henig: Are you saying
the Member States, or some of them, may be deliberately looking
at this from a particular viewpoint or misunderstanding the law
of the sea?
General Laitinen: I am not going to say that.
I have to limit my answers to the role that I have.
Q253 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
I think, again, you touched on this in your presentation but perhaps
you could develop it. Some witnesses have told us that while there
is no lack of registered assets for Frontex operations in the
Centralised Record of Available Technical Equipment—that
delightful acronym, CRATE—Member States do not always honour
their pledges. Could you give some examples of this, diplomatically
of course? Is there a mechanism for ensuring that pledges are
honoured and assets pledged are made available for operations?
General Laitinen: Thank you very much. When
speaking about this Centralised Record of Available Technical
Equipment, sometimes called by the forbidden nickname "toolbox",
it is one of the means of Frontex. We do have 27 helicopters in
this Centralised Record at the moment, 21 fixed-wing aircraft
and 116 different types of vessels. In addition, we have almost
400 items for border surveillance, equipment for land borders
and maritime borders. This is a compilation of the Member States'
assets which, if the conditions are met, could be deployed to
a joint operation if the contributor considers it is possible.
It is an instrument to facilitate, on the one hand, the bilateral
assistance from one Member State to another in which the only
involvement of Frontex is to provide a list of equipment which
could be available but having no financial contribution to that.
This Centralised Record serves as a planning instrument for Frontex
when planning and preparing the joint operations, what would be
the assets that we would desire to have in the joint operation,
but it is not an entirely Frontex controlled armada which simply
depends on the will and management of this agency to deploy or
not.
Q254 Chairman: That possibly deals
with my next question which is the command relationship with Member
States' assets. The specific question is who, for instance, would
be in charge of an Italian ship used for an operation hosted by
Spain or Malta?
General Laitinen: These rules are clearly stated
in the operational plans. One of the rules is that there is no
other captain on the ship than the captain. Every time it is the
captain of the ship who makes the final decision. That is the
purpose of having a joint planning session, which is a customary
event in Frontex to gather all of the participating Member States
together to draft the joint operation and then agree on the joint
operation. From our point of view there is another aspect for
the operational plan, which is the Community funding aspect. The
issues which are listed in the operational plan are the conditions
to have a Community fund involved. If there is a case where the
rules are not respected then the financial conditions are not
met. It is one of the core issues in a joint operation to make
clear who reports to whom, what is the reporting system, who gives
alerts to whom and who makes these decisions.
Q255 Chairman: It would be specified
in each case?
General Laitinen: Certainly.
Q256 Lord Teverson: Moving on from
CRATE, would you ever see that Frontex has its own operational
assets or is this a bridge too far?
General Laitinen: Thank you very much for that
interesting question! Many people tend to think that we already
have those. We can split that question into two parts. We can
have a legal approach and a political realistic approach to that.
If we speak about the Regulation, in principle the Frontex Regulation
already establishes the possibility for Frontex to have its own
assets. If we start thinking about the cost and how it would fit
into the existing budget of Frontex, which in 2008 would be about
€70 million, and we all know what one helicopter, fixed-wing
aircraft or coastguard vessel would cost, it is a matter of making
a decision in that sense. In an optimal situation I would find
it helpful if to a certain extent Frontex could have certainty
to have something to deploy to the most important operations whereas
the main assets could still come from the Member States. There
are different ways to do that and purchasing equipment is not
necessarily the only way to do that. We would like to have a higher
level of certainty, to have some assets even more rapidly than
the state of play today but I leave that to those to whom it belongs
to determine what is the line to take, whether in the future we
could have our own assets and so on.
Q257 Lord Teverson: I thought you
would say, "No, I don't want anything to do with that"
and I am interested that you did not say that. Perhaps you could
tell me which sorts of assets would be useful and by not having
them at the moment, and I presume you do not mean particularly
battleships or things like that but the smaller things maybe,
it does not work properly now because you have to take time in
assembling things which perhaps you could have.
General Laitinen: I think the contribution of
the Member States is two-fold. It is either in the form of human
resources, experts, or tangible assets, technical equipment. When
we speak about the deployment of experts to our land border, maritime,
airport or other types of operations, pilot projects, we have
not witnessed considerable difficulties in having these experts
for these joint operations. That is one side. What we have seen
is that it is a continuous challenge for us to encourage the Member
States to deploy technical equipment and we are speaking more
about helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft for surveillance purposes
and different types of vessels for both controlling and surveillance
purposes. To a certain extent that is quite understandable because
they are the visible means for that particular country to demonstrate
their capability to control their own borders and if we make a
move from these assets to another area it could be interpreted
in a different way.
Q258 Chairman: Lord Jopling has just
drawn my attention to Article 3 which actually refers to your
technical equipment. What does that mean? It says "It",
ie the agency, "may also decide to put its technical equipment
at the disposal of Member States".
General Laitinen: I consider that to be more—
Q259 Chairman: For the future.
General Laitinen: --- of an optional nature.
That is aligned with the possibility to purchase such material.
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