Examination of Witnesses (Questions 371-379)
Major Andrew Mallia
28 NOVEMBER 2007
Q371 Chairman: Major, we are extremely
grateful to you for coming from Malta in order to give evidence
to this Committee. We are a sub-committee which deals with, among
other things, immigration affairs. We are a sub-committee of the
European Union Committee of the House of Lords. May I also welcome
the High Commissioner who is sitting behind you. It is good to
have you with us. We will send you a transcript of your evidence
in case there are any corrections you feel you must make, and
if there any questions that you feel you cannot answer precisely
or if there is anything you want to supplement, you are very welcome
to write to us in the course of the next week or so. Let us now
proceed. Would you give the Committee an overview of the tasks
of the Maltese border guards, their institutional structure and
their powers, including what coercive powers they have and whether
you have the right to use weapons. Also, could you tell us what
national resources and capabilities Malta allocates towards dealing
with both legal and illegal migration? I know you could probably
talk to us for two hours on those questions but we have about
an hour and a quarter before we must wind the session up, so if
you could be reasonably brief we would appreciate that because
we have, as you know, a lot of questions to ask you.
Major Mallia: My Lord Chairman, I will do my
best. First of all, may I thank you for this invitation and pass
to you the greetings of the Commander of the Armed Forces who
has also thanked you for this opportunity to make ourselves heard.
To begin with a general picture of how border control is organised
in Malta: there are two agencies which are involved in border
control, the Malta Police and the Armed Forces of Malta. The division
of their duties is that the police deal more with the regulatory
side of business—so visas, immigration control, et cetera—and
to do that the police allocate about 150 people at the airport,
in the seaports and within their headquarters. These include both
uniformed officers as well as civilian employees working as immigration
officers. On police establishment and exactly how they are organised,
I do not have that available. That is not exactly our line of
business; however, if that is of interest to you, I am sure I
can make that available to you at reasonably short notice. In
regard to the Armed Forces of Malta, our role is purely on the
blue borders, on maritime borders. We are in that role purely
due to the fact that we are the sole maritime forces in Malta.
There is no maritime police, there is no maritime customs agency,
there is no border guard as such, as there is in many other European
countries, so we have taken upon us this role more as an automatic
reaction to the fact that we are the sole maritime force. However,
we are also legally empowered to do this role. The officers of
the Armed Forces have the right to act as police officers and
customs officers when conducting law-enforcement business, so
it is covered by the appropriate legislation within Maltese law.
What powers do we have to conduct the control and protection of
the Maltese maritime borders? We have all those powers which are
accorded to us, in most cases, by international law. Operations
at sea generally tend to be governed by international legal instruments
rather than purely national ones, and the National legal instruments
that we have reflect very closely the international legal regime,
so we will have a Territorial Seas and Contiguous Zone Act which
is basically the reflection of what is provided for in the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Do we carry weapons
during our duties? Yes, we do. We have particular rules of engagement
which are used in our law enforcement roles which differ from
rules of engagement which will be used during military operations.
Why do we carry weapons? Because (a) it is part of our character
as an Armed Forces and (b) the nature of the work we are doing
has mandated the use or at least the threat of the use of these
weapons on some occasions. So it is partly based on who we are
and it is also partly based on our experiences through the years.
As an organisation, we have been doing this for approximately
30 years now—obviously now in a much more formal and organised
manner, partly because of the EU accession and the Schengen border
code itself. In total, we allocate approximately 350 people to
the border control role. These are not dedicated solely to border
control; these are dedicated to all our other maritime roles,
including search and rescue, fisheries protection, anti-smuggling
and anti-contraband operations, but obviously all of them have
a role in border control when it comes to blue borders. Regarding
the financial allocation which we devote to this task every year,
when you exclude personnel costs and also amortised costs of the
assets (that is, depreciation) and you also exclude the funding
which we have received from Frontex operations which is a particular
funding branch, for 2006 we conducted operations to the tune of
€1.8 to €1.9 million in border control alone. Again,
I repeat, that does not include our personnel costs, because the
personnel are not dedicated solely to that task. That does not
take into account that appreciation of the assets involved. Those
are purely operational costs. Nor does it include Frontex operations
which are financed through a particular method which does not
fall within our normal financing.
Chairman: Lord Marlesford, would you like to
come back on that?
Q372 Lord Marlesford: Yes, indeed.
Thank you very much. That is a very helpful introduction indeed.
On the funding point, you gave us a clear picture of your marginal
extra costs of conducting your own operations. You referred to
Frontex being a separate funding operation. Could you give us
some indication of the financial provision and source of it for
Frontex and, also, presumably you do not get any outside funding
towards the €1.8 to €1.9 million for your own domestic
operations?
Major Mallia: That is partly correct and partly
not. Let me begin with the question of Frontex if I may. Once
an operation has been declared a joint operation (that is, is
it involves resources of more than one Member State), Frontex
will offer to finance the purely operational costs of that operation
to the tune of 80%. Obviously that does mean that the particular
Member State has to fork out the costs on the front-line but then
will receive a refund of those costs. The costs are based on the
type of asset you are offering and, until date, are based mostly
on receipts and invoices for the various materials and supplies
which you would have required to use. There is currently, however,
a project ongoing within Frontex, which is called the REM project
(the running expenses of means project), which is attempting to
establish standard costings for types of assets and types of resources,
so that when it comes to refunding the operational costs of those
resources it can be done in a much more efficient and quick manner.
In regard to external funding for the other tasks, when it comes
to recurrent funding, no, we do not receive anything from external
services. However, in regard to capital funding, because we are
a military organisation we can tap into military financial instruments,
such as the US foreign military funding system and funds which
we may have allocated in that. We will have patrol boats operating
at sea on migrant operations which were funded by the US Government.
We have had patrol vessels funded directly by the Italian Government.
We are conducting the procurement of our new helicopter also using
foreign military sales funding from the US Government. So: operational
costs, no; capital costs, yes. Those have totalled about €30
million over the period 2000-07, so they have been a significant
factor in allowing us to upgrade our operational means.
Q373 Lord Marlesford: To follow up
on that particular aspect, is the setting up of Frontex going
to require assets to be available to countries which are going
to operate; in other words, not calling on the national force
to carry out an operation but to be able to carry out an operation?
Will Frontex be financing any such capital assets?
Major Mallia: I am aware that the Frontex regulation
does provide for Frontex owning operational equipment. The scope
and the nature of that operational equipment are not defined.
From a technical point of view, I do not think Frontex as an agency
is equipped to be operating aircraft, patrol vessel, helicopters,
et cetera. It is quite a complicated task which requires a high
level of skill and a high level of infrastructure. As to whether
the Commission or the Community as a whole is making funds available
for procurement of assets, the answer is yes, and the financial
instrument, in particular, is the External Borders Fund, which
has only become available in 2007. In 2007, 2008, 2009, if I am
correct, there is approximately €140 to €180 million
per year. What is interesting about the External Borders Fund
is not the total amounts, it is how it is divided. It is divided
on the level of risk, which is assessed by Frontex; on the number
of illegal entries you may have in proportion to the size of your
country; as to the length of the external border which you are
policing. As far as Malta is concerned, therefore, it is a slightly
more level playing field than other financial instruments because
the risk level and the external border which we are policing bring
us up in the ranking of the amount of funding allocated to us
and that will provide substantial funds up until the period to
2013.
Chairman: I do not want to get too deeply involved
in Frontex at this stage because we have a good many more questions
to come later on it.
Q374 Lord Marlesford: Are you involved
in bilateral co-operation with border guards from other Member
States or third countries? If so, how does this work out in practice?
Also, I think I am right in saying that Malta is not a member
of NATO.
Major Mallia: That is correct.
Q375 Lord Marlesford: Therefore,
does it mean that you do not have access to the communications
capabilities which NATO would have which might be, in certain
circumstances, helpful in a Frontex operation?
Major Mallia: To start from the co-operation
side, the people we co-operate with mostly at an operational level
are obviously Italy, being our direct neighbours and are being
our sole neighbour in terms of geography when it comes to the
European Union. Admittedly Greece is a peripheral neighbour, if
you would like to put it that way, but the distances between us
mean that co-operation in this field is not particularly necessary.
We have a very good working relationship with the various Italian
agencies involved in this issue, and there are a number—there
are at least four major agencies involved at sea. That evidences
itself not only in our co-operation day-to-day but the fact that
we do have an Italian military mission resident in Malta, so we
have representatives with some of those organisations to whom
we can talk directly. That would be our major co-operation on
a day-to-day basis. There are obviously the joint operations in
which we are participating. I am not sure whether that will be
the subject of later questions, but that is the other area where
we are conducting co-operation with other countries. Regarding
the NATO aspect, I think what is most needed from NATO will be
more of the information capabilities; that is, having the domain
awareness at sea, and a lot of that is available to us already,
either from bilateral agreements or from special arrangements
which are in place.
Chairman: Lord Dear.
Q376 Lord Dear: My Lord Chairman,
thank you. Major, thank you very much for coming and the point
I am making can probably be dealt with very quickly. I am interested
in the rules of engagement for armed operations. It may be, rather
than taking time out today, that it would be possible for you
to let us have a note of how your rules of engagement operate
and send that through to the Secretariat.
Major Mallia: I do not think that should pose
any major problems.
Q377 Lord Dear: You probably carry
the card.
Major Mallia: We carry the white card. It is
based on the British Army white card which was issued for Northern
Ireland operations. That is where it started from. It is very
similar to that in concept. It has obviously been updated over
the years because of new legal developments. Sometimes we bring
special rules of engagement into force for a particular event,
but that is the basics. I should think that I will be able to
provide that.
Chairman: Thank you. Lord Mawson.
Q378 Lord Mawson: My question is
really about the funding mechanisms and how they work in practice.
How long is it taking for invoices to clear or is it too early
to say?
Major Mallia: I would say that at this time
it is too early to say. This is the first year that we have been
heavily involved in joint operations. As far as I am aware, the
refund for the initial phases of joint operation Nautilus II,
which was in June/July, have already been received—at least
in part—so there does seem to be a moving process, an ongoing
process. We are presently working on requesting the refunding
of costs for the operation in Spain, Operation INDALO, in which
we were involved for three weeks. It obviously does involve a
certain amount of paperwork—these things do. I think the
REM project which I mentioned earlier, in which Frontex is trying
to quantify standard costs, will simplify this because it will
mean that you just have a standard claim form and you have to
specify the types of assets you are using and you would not have
to provide invoices because it has been established beyond doubt
that those are the operating costs for it. When it comes to the
capital instruments, those are a lot more complicated. Those require
an application stage, an evaluation stage, a project proposal
stage. The ones in which I have been involved tended to take two
to two and a half years to bring the equipment to the people,
but that is the nature of the game and you have to factor that
into your planning process and take it as a fact of life. You
really plan that you have a two and a half to three year lead
time of those items if you intend to fund them with EU funding.
Chairman: Lady Henig, would you like to come
in.
Q379 Baroness Henig: Thank you very
much indeed. Again, I would like to thank you very much for coming
here and giving us your perspective on the event. To what extent
does Malta co-operate with international organisations such as,
for example, the International Organisation for Migration and
the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in? What does
this co-operation involve in practice?
Major Mallia: Again, I can only answer this
question from our perspective not from the perspective of the
police. However, in practice, for the Armed Forces it is a very
close co-operation on two levels. The first level is during the
period in which we are conducting operations at sea and we have
information that a migrant boat may be at sea, may be in distress.
Many times the UNHCR representative in Malta is the conduit for
receiving that information, either from his counterpart in Italy
who has been contacted by third parties or he himself may have
been contacted by third parties. Many times he will continue to
monitor that case and we will provide this information to him.
We will provide him with updates so he has a good feel for what
is happening. With the IOM, in the case of the Armed Forces of
Malta, much less, because the IOM has a different role in the
way it is supposed to address the problem once the persons are
in country rather than anything else. I can tell you that the
office which is responsible for the liaison with both the IOM
and the UNHCR is part of the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs.
It is called the Third Countries Nationals Office and their sole
job is to conduct this liaison. Obviously the police can give
you a much different perspective on that. Our operational co-operation,
our practical co-operation with them is limited to the degree
that I have told you.
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