Flotilla of patrol boats off Spain forms first joint guard of Europe's frontiers
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Your support makes all the difference.Patrol boats from Spain, Britain, France, Portugal and Italy launched Europe's first joint maritime surveillance scheme against illegal immigrants yesterday, in an operation hailed by Spain as a prototype for a future European border police.
The pilot project, called Operation Ulysses, is to monitor the western Mediterranean from Algeciras in southern Spain to Palermo in Sicily. Spain's Interior Minister, Angel Acebes, hailed the initiative as "planting the seeds of a future EU border police". Speaking in Palma, Majorca, Mr Acebes said: "If this system of co-operation among patrol boats and radar controls is satisfactory it could form the pillar of a border police force in the European Union. It is the common responsibility of the EU to protect our frontiers."
The first experimental phase will last until 8 February. In the spring, operations will be extended to the Saharan Atlantic, between Western Sahara and Spain's Canary Islands. A flotilla of patrol boats is to intercept small boats – pateras – of would-be immigrants, and either send them home or, if they are in national waters, take them ashore.
The scheme was devised last summer at an EU summit in Seville, which agreed to develop plans to protect Europe's external borders against illegal immigration. EU members were invited to join whichever pilot plan interested them.
Operation Ulysses includes co-operation among participants in ports and on the high seas. "The idea is to start to unify, through the different projects, the work of the police forces of member states," an EU source said. But many states were reluctant to devote extra funds to the effort, the source added.
As controls around the Strait of Gibraltar have tightened, the route for illegal migration from Africa to Europe via the Canaries has become increasingly popular. Numbers of those landing in the Canaries in flimsy pateras driven by outboard motors quadrupled between 2000 and 2002, while numbers coming ashore on Spain's southern coast fell by half. Yesterday, at least 73 would-be immigrants landed on beaches in the Canaries.
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