The state of alert about potential terrorist attacks remains high, executive director of EU border agency Frontex Fabrice Leggeri warned. He stressed the danger posed by undetected migrant flows to Europe.
EU border agency Frontex has warned about the danger of undetected migrant flows. The agency's executive director Fabrice Leggeri warned the European Parliament that undetected migrant landings from Tunisia and Algeria could pose a danger for Europe.
''(The terrorism threat) remains high and we must be certain that there are no frontier crossings to the EU that are not intercepted, as this would be to the detriment of European security,'' Leggeri told the European Parliament during a briefing about the Themis operation managed by Italy along the central European route.
He urged a ''more integrated approach'' in border management and said that a Frontex aircraft had detected un-intercepted migrant flows from Algeria and Tunisia. This, he added, raised security concerns.
Growing inflow from Tunisia
Frontex has been carrying out surveillance flights at nighttime to detect new routes towards Europe. According to official estimates, although landings from Libya have decreased, those from Tunisia are on the rise. Overall, "arrivals were 62 percent less than over the same period last year", explained Leggeri.
An estimated ''71 percent of migrants left from Libya, compared to 95 percent in 2017, but 20 percent in 2018 came from Tunisia''. He also spoke about the ''sharp rise in arrivals'' of migrants from Morocco and Algeria registered in Spain.
Leggeri's warning came just a few days after an attack on a supermarket in Trebes, France, and the arrest of an Egyptian national suspected of having pledged allegiance to ISIS in Foggia, Italy. Rome has increased security measures over fears of a terror attack.
Hundreds of undetected landings on Italy's coasts
A few months ago, an Interpol report had alerted that an estimated 50 Tunisian nationals, former ISIS fighters, had landed on Italy's coast and, in some instances, immediately traveled to another European country. The Italian interior ministry and intelligence had denied the report saying there was no evidence to back it. But such a risk has been well known for months.
Hundreds of undetected landings are suspected of having taken place on the coasts of Sicily and Sardinia, mainly with Tunisians as well as sub-Saharan Africans arriving aboard fishing vessels or dinghies and then fleeing with the help of smugglers.
Last June, anti-mafia DDA police and finance police arrested 15 Italian and Tunisian nationals suspected of smuggling migrants in the so-called 'Scorpion Fish' investigation. Meanwhile, France and Germany, which have reactivated internal Schengen border controls over the past two years, are reportedly about to notify to Brussels a further extension as the anti-terror measure is set to expire in May.