Mr Simon Busuttil, Mr Gérard Deprez, Mr Javier Moreno Sanchez and Ms Hélène Calers

16 OCTOBER 2007

  Q86 Chairman: Welcome to all of you. Thank you very much for coming to give evidence to us. I am Lord Wright of Richmond. I am Chairman of a House of Lords European Sub-Committee and the purpose of this meeting, as you know, is to collect evidence for an inquiry which we have just started into Frontex, and we will in fact be visiting Warsaw next week to talk to Frontex themselves. The purpose of this occasion is to seek your views as Members of the European Parliament on Frontex. We have allocated the questions among ourselves, of which you have had notice, but perhaps I may leave it to you to decide which of you want to answer the particular question. The meeting is on the record. A record is being taken and you will be sent transcripts of the evidence for you to agree or not agree in due course. I wonder if I could start by asking any or all of you to give us your assessment of how Frontex is working so far and whether it has met the European Parliament's expectations, but first of all could you quickly introduce yourselves?

Mr Busuttil: Good afternoon. On behalf of my colleague, Mr Moreno Sanchez, I would like to welcome you to the European Parliament. My name is Simon Busuttil. I am a Member of the European Parliament for Malta. I come from the EPP-ED Group, which is the largest political group in this Parliament. It is the political group in which the British Conservatives are aggregated; at least, they were till this morning. I would like to start by answering your question on my assessment of Frontex so far. It is a negative assessment so far but it is also a hopeful assessment. It is negative to the extent that I do not think that Frontex is doing enough, in particular to stem the immense wave of immigration that is coming northwards from Africa at the moment, hitting in particular southern Mediterranean Member States, such as Malta, Italy and Spain, but also Greece. It is hopeful also, but at the same time I appreciate that Frontex is a very young agency. It has been established for only two years, operational for less than two years, and therefore I am hopeful because I hope that in the future Frontex will become even more effective than it has been so far. I can go into a great deal of detail as to why I think Frontex should be more effective than it is and how this could be done, but I suppose at this introductory stage I should stop there because perhaps there will be supplementary questions and also to give my colleagues the opportunity to introduce themselves and to intervene.

  Q87  Chairman: Thank you very much.

  Mr Moreno Sanchez: I am Javier Moreno from Spain. I am a member of the Socialist Group here in the European Parliament. As you may know, it is very important for countries in the south to get Frontex. I was the European Parliament Rapporteur on policy priorities in the fight against illegal immigration of third-country nationals. We adopted two reports two weeks ago in Strasbourg, one about the fight against legal migration and another about illegal migration. I used to say that Frontex is a baby which was born just two years ago and it is a baby which needs the support of its parents. Its parents are the Member States and the Member States have to give it the tools, the financial and human resources, to implement its actions. As Simon said, it has started, it is not enough, but I think it is important because it is based on one principle, which is obligatory solidarity between the states. It is very important that we share the responsibility on migration and the fight against illegal migration. I think the basic principle is very good, but, as always in the European Union, we are starting and we are very slowly working on that, but the problem is that migration goes faster than our responses and that is why from the Parliament we are asking for more money and more people so that Frontex can help everyone. It will not be a panacea in the fight against illegal migration but it is one tool, one instrument, which is very important.

  Mr Deprez: In my opinion, it is too early to assess the personality of Frontex. It is a very young agency, only two years old. Frontex has to work in a very difficult situation because the territory it has to protect is very large, as it is the ocean. It has nothing to do with the borders of Belgium, with the Netherlands or with Luxembourg. I would like to add that Frontex is not an operational agency. It only has to manage co-operation between Member States. It does not have its own agents but only depends on the voluntary co-operation of the various Member States and, as you can appreciate, this makes the operation of Frontex very difficult. Indeed, one must make a distinction between Frontex as such and the Member States, which have to put the human and tactical means at the disposal of Frontex.

  Q88  Chairman: How do you assess the contribution that Member States have made so far? Do you think Frontex is adequately understood within the European Union? Are Member States adequately aware of the contribution they could and should be making to it?

  Mr Deprez: It is difficult to answer your question. I think that there are some Member States which are well aware that they have to do something but not all members are currently aware that they have to put people or technical means at the disposal of the agency. This is the reason why I think that RABIT is a new stage in the operation of Frontex, offering a new kind of non-mandatory co-operation between Member States.

  Mr Busuttil: Frontex has created what we call a "CRATE", or "toolbox", if you like, which is a register of assets, typically boats, helicopters and planes, belonging, of course, to the individual Member States—because Frontex, as Mr Deprez has just said, does not have its own army, it does not have its own coastguard, it does not have its own assets—but registered in the central Frontex register in the form of a pledge, that is to say, when Frontex needs to embark on a mission it will call upon the assets in this register in order to use them in its different missions. The problem is two-fold there. The first problem is that I do not think that the Member States were very generous in the assets that they pledged, and there is a list, and I suppose you can get access to the table I have here which shows which Member States actually registered assets in this toolbox. The second problem, which is even worse, is that the Member States were even less generous in honouring their pledges. To give you one instance, in the Frontex mission in the Mediterranean in July there was not even one Italian boat and yet this list tells me that Italy pledged as many as 32 boats to Frontex, so there is a huge discrepancy between the pledges and their fulfilment. These are commitments. We are not talking about all the army or all the assets of an individual country. These are assets pledged to Frontex. There is still a huge discrepancy between the pledges and the promises that have been fulfilled.

  Q89  Chairman: Whose job is it to follow up these pledges and remind Member States of their pledges?

  Mr Deprez: That is not specified.

  Q90  Chairman: It is not a Frontex responsibility?

  Mr Deprez: No. Frontex is only prepared to co-ordinate the assistance that the different Member States are offering to a country which has problems with illegal immigration. The Regulation does not specify who is in charge of reminding Member States that they have to send personnel and equipment to the countries which need them.

   Mr Moreno Sanchez: From the Parliament we asked the Commission to ask the Member States but we had no response. In order to convince the states there is one important argument: the excellent results of Frontex's operations. The Vice President of Spain, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, said just a few weeks ago that with Frontex's four joint operations in the Canary Islands during the first eights months of 2007, the number of illegal immigrants who have arrived in Spain has been reduced by 75%

  Q91  Chairman: Compared with last year?

  Mr Moreno Sanchez: Yes. Where it works it works, so we have to convince the other states that we mean it and that they have to deliver.

  Mr Busuttil: I think you have really put your finger on the button, as it were, because this is the point of the whole thing: who is responsible for making sure that the pledges that have been made are honoured. This is the great loophole. Mr Deprez next to us here is historic in this sense because he recently was responsible for a new law, the RABITs legislation, which introduced a novel concept, which is what he calls "compulsory solidarity", and he put it into law. This means that Member States are obliged to participate in this RABITs scheme, and this is not about assets now; this is a different notion. The RABITs, as you are aware, are the Rapid Border Intervention Teams, but in that respect legislation was introduced and the notion of compulsory solidarity was introduced. We have nothing of the sort with respect to the pledging of assets, and maybe we ought to introduce that.

  Q92  Baroness Henig: Can I first of all thank you all very much for giving us your time. It is a very valuable opportunity for us to hear different perceptions of how you think things are going. Taking account of aspiration as against reality, which we have just been looking at, what do you think the role of Frontex should be in controlling borders? Should its role, for instance, extend to rescue at sea, and I am mindful that many of you are from southern European areas?

  Mr Moreno Sanchez: We have put exactly this point in our report from the Parliament. We believe that steps should be taken to introduce within the mandate of Frontex operations of the rescue of migrants and asylum seekers at risk. Frontex has to rescue and save people, and to stop illegal migration. Commissioner Frattini told us two weeks ago that last year 400 people were arrested, people who were trafficking human beings. We do believe that the first thing Member States and third countries have to do is to respect international law and international obligations on the rescue of persons at sea. If they have people dying they have to rescue them.

  Mr Deprez: According to the Council Regulation of 26 October 2004 establishing a European agency, rescue does not count amongst the tasks of the agency. However, there are international laws in this field to protect people who are in danger at sea and give them assistance: when you are doing an operation and you see there are people in a boat and they are in danger you have to intervene and give assistance to those people, even if it is not a task or an obligation foreseen by the regulation; but it is an international obligation. The next problem is what to do with those people? But this is another matter. So it was not necessary to add rescue as a task of this agency because there are international laws to protect people who are in danger at sea.

  Mr Busuttil: I just want to place emphasis on the last point made by Mr Deprez. I strongly feel that rescue at sea is just one side of the coin. The other side of the coin—and it is the same coin, believe me—is who is going to take responsibility for the lives of those that are rescued at sea? This difficulty has been played out at sea this summer with countries arguing with each other over who is going to take the people who are saved at sea. There was never any difficulty over who should save them. Of course we should all save them. Wherever you are you have to save lives at sea. The difficulty is who should take them after they are saved and this in turn may perhaps affect the readiness, if you like, of Member States to participate in Frontex missions, to offer assets or to honour their pledges.

  Mr Moreno Sanchez: What we cannot do is what we are doing month after month, and yesterday we had another example, which is to delegate the responsibility to the boat's captain. Yesterday it was a Spanish captain who saved people and afterwards he had a problem going back to Libya to give them back. Frontex and the states have to take the responsibility to rescue and to assume this responsibility. We cannot delegate it because it is happening day after day. Yesterday there was a Spanish captain who had to save the people and afterwards he had the problem, "What do I do with all these people on my boat?", because Libya did not want to have them and I think it took was one or two days to find a solution and at the end the Libyan authorities said okay because the Spanish Foreign Minister called Tripoli and said, "You have to do something". We cannot leave this problem to the boat's captain.

  Q93  Lord Jopling: The evidence that you have given to us underlines evidence we already have, the point that states are reluctant to fulfil their obligations because there are no clear rules as to where people rescued at sea should be disembarked. I wonder if I could ask you—and, my Lord Chairman, I do not know whether you think the answer to this question might be better off the record—if you could tell us why, the Italians having committed 32 ships, there was none available as there should have been? What is their response to this? Also, what I would like to ask particularly is what is your solution to this very serious problem which clearly undermines the whole concept of Frontex? How do we get out of this? What is the way? Is it politically possible?

  Mr Deprez: It is a very difficult question. When you read the regulation, it is clear that, at the moment, responsibility for the control of external borders lies with Member States. Frontex is only offering support in cases of emergency. In my opinion, it is necessary to make a new regulation establishing compulsory assistance to some Member States in cases of emergency, especially to some very small states facing great influxes which they are not able to control, as Malta, for example. I do not say anything against Malta, which is facing a totally new situation as a recent member of the European Union. It is a kind of new airport and they are totally unable to control that. I think it will be necessary to make a new regulation saying that in cases of emergency if Member States receive a solicitation from Frontex they are obliged to give some support. There must be in some cases compulsory assistance to some Member States. If there is no compulsory assistance, there will always be difficulties. It is in this sense that we have to make some kind of progress. That is my opinion.

  Mr Busuttil: What did the Italians say? Off the record, did you say? No, the Italians said on the record—

  Q94  Chairman: Just to be clear, do you want to go off the record?

  Mr Busuttil: No, I was joking.

  Q95  Chairman: I would prefer you to stay on the record.

  Mr Busuttil: I have absolutely no difficulty in doing that. The Italians in the summer when this happened simply said that they thought that Frontex missions would never be sufficiently effective without the participation of Libya because, as you know, Libya has refused to participate in these missions although it was repeatedly invited to do so. The Italians clearly have a point, but if we have to wait for the Libyans to join us in participating in this mission we will never be able to do anything. We could not have been held at ransom, if you like, by the Libyans until we got some action in place. The Italians put forward that argument in July but subsequently changed their mind and when the mission resumed in the month of September—because it stopped in August; for some incredibly strange reason it stopped at the peak of summer, but that is beside the point—the Italians were there in relatively full force. As to the solution, I will just make one note. The European Parliament, because here you are talking to parliamentarians, have very limited powers in this respect but perhaps our strongest powers here are our budgetary powers. Since we are part of the budgetary authority of the European Union we are trying to make sure that we use that power, if you like, as a leverage to get what we want in terms of the greater effectiveness of this agency. We have done two things recently in the Budgets Committee and we shall be voting on this in plenary at first reading for the 2008 budget next week. First of all, we have voted to double the budget of the agency for next year. Secondly, we have voted to put in reserve, to freeze effectively, up to 30% of the administrative budget of the agency and only to release it if we are satisfied that Frontex has improved its accountability towards us and its effectiveness on the ground.

  Q96  Chairman: Do your proposals in the Budget Committee reflect the ambitions and applications of Frontex themselves? In other words, are you talking about roughly similar sums?

  Mr Busuttil: You will be surprised to hear that we are not, not at all. We have actually voted a budget which is far greater, it is plus 30 million over and above what the Commission and Frontex originally requested from us, the reason being, of course, not that Frontex does not want to work or does not want to have the budget to work, but because it is very conscious of the fact that it is a young agency and therefore it should learn how to walk before starting to run. But, of course, we have no interest in seeing Frontex walk. We want it to run at great speed and this explains why we have done this. Incidentally, this is the second year running that we are giving more money to Frontex than it requested at the beginning of the budget proposals. Last year we increased their budget unilaterally by €15 million and, sure enough, this year, because the missions grew in number, they came for an additional €7 million, so over and above their original request for the 2007 budget they now have in hand plus €22 million, so I think we are not far off the mark when we give them plus €30 million this year.

  Mr Moreno Sanchez: I just want to add one thing about the solution. It is a key issue to control our borders and I think we have to do that inside the European Union but also in co-operation with the third countries. I think we have taken important steps with the creation of RABIT's teams, and with the Rabat and Tripoli ministerial conferences in 2006 and the UN Global Migration Forum, in Brussels. I do believe it is important that third countries get involved and that we help them to control their own borders. As I have said Frontex is one tool, but also close co-operation and dialogue with all third countries concerned is very important.

  Q97  Earl of Listowel: You referred earlier to the expectations on Frontex but do you feel that the expectations on Frontex are being managed well? Is the Commission sending out clear messages about what Frontex can do and what it cannot do?

  Mr Busuttil: My reaction to that question would be that this is not about expectations. This is about events and we have already been overtaken by events, so yes, it could be that people have a lot of expectations, not least in my own country, that Frontex will work miracles and solve everything. Clearly it will not, but we have to act fast simply because we have been overtaken by events.

  Q98  Lord Jopling: Following my original question, you talked about the solution being to introduce a degree of compulsion. Has anyone drafted a form of words yet which would give those new powers and, if so, could we see them?

  Mr Deprez: To some extent, yes. If you read, for example, the regulation creating the RABIT teams, Article 4 says: "Member States shall contribute to the Rapid Pool via a national expert pool on the basis of the various defined profiles by nominating border guards corresponding to the required profiles". "Shall contribute" implies a kind of compulsory determination, but there is no sanction and no juridical control if a Member State does not act accordingly. It is a kind of political compulsory mechanism but is not a juridical one.

  Q99  Baroness Tonge: I just wanted to be quite clear how the money works. You said there had been an increase in the budget this year. Is that money for Frontex administration or is that to pay Member States for their contribution? That money goes to Member States governments, does it?

  Mr Deprez: That is the operation of credits. It is not for the personnel of the agency.