CPS Director Tim Knox wrote for the Daily Telegraph on the UK-EU border and the issues relating to the UK’s ongoing obselte border technology, Thursday 7 April 2016.
“As Europe’s borders crisis lurches from one quick fix to another, it is only of limited comfort to know that the UK is not caught up in the mess that is the Schengen Area. For we would certainly be affected by the latest fudge from the European Commission and its embattled border agency Frontex.
Only this week, Frontex admitted that Europe’s borders are now so porous that a record 1.8 million illegal border crossings were made last year—six times the previous record, set in 2014. Frontex has also warned that a “staggering number” of EU citizens have travelled to Syria to fight with Isil and that “with no thorough check or penalties in place for those making such false declarations, there is a risk that some persons representing a security threat to the EU may be taking advantage of this situation.”
Its latest proposals are to weaken the Dublin agreement, so that would-be asylum seekers are distributed between states based on population, unemployment, and wealth. That offers relief to governments like Greece and Italy which are manning the continent’s southern frontier (yet doing it so poorly that even the responsible Greek minister has described his own country’s reception camps as like “Dachau”). But this makes limited sense if the objective is to deter bogus claims, or shore up those countries’ commitment to meet their EU obligations.”
To read the full article, please visit The Daily Telegraph.
Date Added: Thursday 7th April 2016
