WRITTEN QUESTION P-0241/00

by Ioannis Marínos (PPE-DE) to the Council

(4 February 2000)

Subject: Cost for Greece of implementing the Schengen Agreement

Over the last few years Greece has persistently endeavoured to set up the infrastructure necessary for the implementation of the Schengen Agreement: it has notably set up the Border Guard Service, strengthened its border services by recruiting an additional 756 police officers and its Port Police by recruiting a further 500 officers and port guards and ordered and purchased high-tech equipment. In particular, the Greek state has equipped its services with portable heat detection cameras to monitor the borders, photophone-type image teletransmission apparatuses to detect forged documents, binocular systems for night observation and surveillance and apparatuses for the mechanical processing of travel documents. It has also taken delivery of speedboats from Sweden and the USA and sophisticated four-wheel drive jeep-type vehicles in order more effectively to monitor the hundreds of kilometres of land and sea borders it shares with non-EU and non-Schengen countries. Greece has thus already equipped itself with, or ordered, very expensive high-tech systems and instruments in order to meet its obligations, since its neighbours are all non-EU countries and some of these (Turkey and Albania) are sources of large numbers of illegal immigrants. It should be pointed out that some countries which are also parties to the Schengen Agreement, such as Luxembourg, have not only not incurred any additional cost since the entry into force of this Agreement, but actually face less of a financial burden than before, since they have withdrawn the security forces which used to be at the borders of other countries which are now Schengen states to the interior.

In view of the above, will the Council say whether the Schengen Agreement countries have received any funding to furnish themselves with the necessary equipment, whether Greece has made any official request to the EU in this connection and, if aid has been provided, what is the extent of this aid?

Reply

(10/11 April 2000)

Member States applying the Schengen acquis have not received financial assistance from the Community to implement the measures required at their borders by the Schengen Convention. This is also true for the period when, before the Amsterdam Treaty come into force, Schengen cooperation was governed by decision-making procedures external to the Union.

The matter of financial compensation was raised, in particular by Greece, during the negotiations with those States that joined the Schengen group after the Schengen Convention was signed in 1990, but it was established that no such financial compensation was provided for therein.

Since the incorporation of the Schengen acquis into the Union framework the Council has not received any request from Greece for compensation. It should, however, be noted that the Tampere European Council called for closer cooperation and technical assistance between the services controlling Member States' borders, in particular in the form of exchange and technological transfer programmes, especially at sea borders, and for the applicant countries to be involved in such cooperation without delay.