DRESDEN, Germany - The European UnionÂ’s new border agency must be given the patrol boats and helicopters it needs to prevent a massive wave of illegal immigration this summer, the EUÂ’s top migration official said on Monday.| Good luck with that. |
Frontex, the EU’s fledging border agency, struggled for months last year to obtain a few boats and aircraft to mount limited patrols off the Canaries and Malta. It was ‘absolutely impossible’ that EU member states should refuse to give Frontex what it needs, EU migration and security Commissioner Franco Frattini said as he arrived for a two-day meeting of EU interior and justice ministers in Dresden.
‘I’m talking about vessels, I’m talking about helicopters,’ he said. Frattini said EU states must give Frontex this equipment no later than April if the agency was to be able to handle the expected ‘massive flows of illegal migrants’.