Safeguarding Europe’s Southern Borders: Interview with Klaus Roesler, Director of Operations Division, Frontex
Safeguarding Europe’s Southern Borders: Interview with Klaus Roesler, Director of Operations Division, Frontex

Summary/Abstract: In this exclusive new interview, Balkanalysis.com director Chris Deliso gets the insights of Klaus Roesler, the director of Frontex’s Operations Division regarding the general operations of the Agency and its present and future activities in Greece, allowing readers to get a better understanding of both the challenges faced and the criminal and human dimensions of illegal migration. Editor’s note: Illegal immigration is a major security issue for the EU, and one that is highly politicized in many European countries today. The European Union has 42,672km of external sea borders and 8,826km of external land borders (not counting Croatia, which is expected to join in 2013). The key agency tasked with coordinating cooperation at the EU’s external borders, while also helping member states improve their border policing capacities, is Frontex. Active since June 2005, this organization works with EU member states to provide operational coordination at external borders, while also overseeing border management standards of a uniform quality, in the process liaising with various international organizations and security structures involved with organized crime and migration issues. Although it is based in Warsaw and has been active on several EU borders, Frontex has received the most media attention for its land and sea operations in the Mediterranean – from Spain’s Canary Islands to Lampedusa, between Italy and Libya, and above all at Greece’s land and sea borders with Turkey. In October 2010, for the first time in Frontex’s history, a Rapid Border Deployment Team (RABIT) was deployed, to Greece’s Evros border region with Turkey. This operation resulted in a 70 percent decline in illegal immigration over a four-month period.

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