COMMENTARY

Spring 2010

by Jean-Pierre Maulny

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Ilkka Laitinen is right that Frontex must do more to deal with cross-border criminals, but he seems to overlook the role of maritime operations. The EU needs to coordinate security on its land borders, but its maritime security needs are even more pressing. Because the sea is an open space, uncoordinated national efforts to secure sea borders will founder. Harmonising maritime security among member states should become Frontex’s top priority. The EU’s recent Operation Atalanta highlights the potential for success, Frontex should take note and encourage more coordination among the member states and the EU agencies.

A record 11 ships and 20 member states have been taking part in Atalanta, the first major naval operation under the European Security and Defence Policy. The mission’s popularity also explains its success, because unlike military forays in Afghanistan, its protection of fishing boats and container ships against piracy look to Europeans like tangible results.

There’s going to be a growing need for naval missions in the future as 90% of the EU’s international trade goes by sea, and that huge percentage is likely to increase. With pirates upping the ante and attacking more and more ships in the Straits of Malacca, the China Sea and the Gulf of Aden, EU governments will find they have to monitor the situation more closely than ever and must be prepared to use force when necessary.

So it was reassuring when the European Council decided to continue the Atalanta mission in 2010, and when two more states asked to join it. A recent list of European maritime initiatives shows that the EU is now taking maritime security very seriously indeed. In December 2008, the EU decided to link-up all maritime surveillance systems, and in the second half of last year during the Swedish presidency there was a major effort to create closer ties between the European Security Maritime Agency, Frontex and the European Defence Agency. Two other projects now in the pipeline are the surveillance of the Mediterranean by six countries led by France, and the surveillance of the North Sea by 10 countries led by Sweden.

What are the implications of all this for Frontex? IIkka Laitinen emphasises that maritime security operations are already Frontex’s most visible activity, and in the future it could further contribute to maritime security in important but less high-profile ways. It could, for instance, oversee the distribution of assets to EU member states to address maritime security, and it could share its maritime security expertise with non-EU countries like Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.

Laitinen might also have mentioned a number of other ways that Frontex could secure Europe’s borders through maritime initiatives. Many member states still lack the means to scan sea-borne containers thoroughly, so Frontex should take charge of container scanning in Europe and bring it up to U.S. standards. Frontex also needs to develop capabilities to monitor a wider geographical area so that it can better track piracy, migration and the illegal trafficking of drugs and small arms.

Frontex’s efforts will, of course, only be one plank in a wider European maritime defence and security strategy, and it’s a strategy that still has a long way to go. It needs to build closer links between civilian and military bodies, and should also aim on creating a single European naval industrial base, as to the various national industrial bases that currently supply EU forces. An EU maritime defence strategy should also set out security headline goals similar to the ESDP’s defence headline goals.