 Good afternoon everybody who has joined us this afternoon on this IIEA seminar and we're very pleased that you've been able to join us and I hope you will find our presentation interesting. We were to have Mr Fabrizio Legere to talk to us but unfortunately, due to work commitments he's not able to join us but we're very honored indeed to be joined by Goeth Brinkman, who is the director of the International and European Cooperation Division in Frontex. Now as you know anybody who's already joined one of our webinars, you can join the discussion using the Q&A button on the Zoom and you can send in questions during the presentation if you're alerted to something you want to ask and when the presentation is finished we can come to those questions. Just to tell you that the presentation and the Q&A today are both on the record. Now to introduce Mr Brinkman and he has extensive experience of over 20 years on legal and international affairs. He is the director of the International and European Cooperation Division of Frontex, but before joining Frontex as head of the International European Cooperation Unit. He worked for the European External Action Service as head of the section for planning CSDP missions in the Crisis Management Planning Directorate. Now that's very complicated CV but it's clearly has very wide experience. His previous experience actually includes several positions in the Western Balkans on field work as well as in the area of the rule of law with the United Nations and the OSCE. And we look forward to his presentation. He's going to give the presentation and cover the establishment of Frontex, the establishment of the EU Standing Core. The benefits arising from the Schengen area and describe some examples of operational support and deployments that Frontex delivers in the Mediterranean in the English Channel and at the EU's eastern borders. I just want to say that those of you who are here today, Frontex doesn't always get a good press. It can get itself criticised and has been criticised in the European Parliament and by NGOs. So it'd be interesting to hear Mr Brinkman today and see how Frontex copes with that kind of criticism and continues to do the vital work that they have to do. So I'd now like to introduce Mr Goetz Brinkman and the floor is yours. Thank you very much for this introduction and well, good afternoon to everybody, to the chair, the members of the institute and also the distinguished participants today. Well, indeed, it's my great pleasure to participate today in this webinar, organised by Ireland's leading think-tank, I understand, on international affairs. Well, I personally don't have so often the opportunity to participate in an event and address an audience which is predominantly Irish or based in Ireland. As you said, Nora, I'm delivering this presentation, almost a speech on behalf of the Executive Director of Frontex who unfortunately at short notice could not join us today, but I will do my best to adequately represent him. I will focus the intervention today on Frontex operational support provided to the Member States for the management of the common EU's external borders. But before going into that, I would like to first make a short reference to Schengen and the latest steps taken by the EU to reinforce the Schengen area. So Ireland is not part of the Schengen area and therefore Ireland is also not a full member of Frontex either. However, the EU legislator has still established specific mechanisms for Ireland participation in Frontex activities based on ad hoc requests from its representative of our management board. And I know there is a management board in Frontex composed of the heads of the border authorities of the Member States and Schengen associated countries and the Commission also holds two chairs. Irish law enforcement officers have definitely a great deal of expertise to support our operations or activities which could indeed create win-win situations for both Ireland and also other Schengen Member States involved or indeed Frontex itself. In the headquarters, where we have roughly thousands of staff now and based in Warsaw, we have 10 Irish colleagues deployed in Frontex and working with us. Four of them are part of the newly created standing corps, so they are not in the headquarters, but in our operations at the external borders and six of them are working in the headquarters. So Ireland has also participated in the past in some of our operational activities, not in our classical joint operations but in return operations for instance, and has also been engaged in various of our networks that deal with different aspects of return. And this includes preparatory work of return but also pre-return activities but also making use of a network we are having a European return liaison officers deployed in various non-EU countries. The operational engagement with Irish authorities is also taking place in the field of EU law enforcement cooperation, namely in this impact activities, their cooperation takes place in different priority areas in the fight against organized crime, such as migrant smuggling, drugs or fraud, including economic and financial crime, where some of the operational actions are led or supported by Frontex and where we also count on the valuable participation of Irish law enforcement or custom authorities as well. The possibilities for Irish engagement are not yet exhausted from the founding EU regulation contains specific legal provisions that would allow the agency to facilitate the operational cooperation and exchange of information between Ireland and some member states. This is of relevance regarding what we call EUROSUR, it's our information network where the Prime Information Exchange platform with member states, which allows us to keep situational awareness all over the external borders. And Irish participation in this EUROSUR network would require though prior bilateral agreement between Ireland and the EU member states participating in Schengen. Well moving to Schengen as such, related aspects here I would like to first stress its critical importance for the European Union. This is the largest area without borders and border control or free travel area in the entire world, and the recent pandemic, and also the crisis in 2015 with large, irregular influx of migrants and asylum seekers, and also deadly terrorist attacks showed the considerable challenge of creating a real free movement area, the efforts to reinforce the Schengen area and its overall governance already started in 2015, with the establishment of the European border and Coast Guard, which consists according to the regulation both of the authorities of the member states and Schengen associated countries, competent for border management on one hand, and the Frontex agency on the other hand. The aim was here to unite national and EU actors to implement what we call the European integrated border management or short IBM, based on the principles of solidarity and shared responsibility laid down in the EU treaty and also in secondary legislation. Well, other than the Eurozone itself or monetary policy, I think IBM it's fair to say that probably this EU policy area is where we have been achieving the highest level of integration between the EU and national administrations or executive layers. But it goes without saying that the achievement of a high and common level of protection of our external borders could not be limited to the adoption of common rules like what we have on the legislative pillar, the Schengen's border code for example, also to provide the funding for national authorities, but it's clear that a proper operational pillar was also needed, which is now embodied in the agency in Frontex and since 2021 Frontex counts on its own force, I might say, and they need a standing core and I will come back to that in a little while, when I will speak about the Frontex ongoing transformation. Well, however, efforts to reinforce the Schengen area cannot only be concentrated at the external borders, they must be multifaceted. And this free movement area will not be viable in the long term. If we don't have a real common migration and asylum policy for for which an agreement on the pact proposed by the Commission in September 2000 is really essential. Some legal instruments included in this new pact is new proposal effect, particularly the border guard community, such as the proposed screening regulation applied to third country nationals arriving at our external borders or the new Euro duck and the asylum and return border procedures. However, efforts in migration, asylum and return have to be complemented with much closer cross border police cooperation, including information exchange to preserve internal security in our free movement area. This commission proposals from only last month, December, 2029 2021, I'm sorry, and are proposing to amend the rules for the control of our external borders the Schengen border code. And they conclude, they include provisions to consider public health threats and lessons learned from the COVID pandemic, and also cases of instrumentalization of migrants like we were witnessing in just last year at the eastern land borders. And this is completing the new legal and policy framework and the proposal some of these proposals also put forward a more robust legal framework including safeguards and coordination mechanisms for the measures that member states may indeed take at their external borders. But these are a lot of challenges and a lot of measures to agree on but Schengen attractiveness remains and this is best demonstrated as I find by the fact that three additional EU member states are in the process of joining the Schengen area, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia, while Cyprus has also applied for memberships for membership and for other non EU states, non EU states Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are Schengen members too. Now, after the short intervention on Schengen it is easier for me to explain the front text developments and transformation to deliver real operational value to the member states the challenge for the agency in the past was indeed to provide this real clarity and effective operational support. When what was the business model was to rely on pledges of member states for human resources and technical equipment to deploy external borders which has not always been easy and where we had constantly requests to member states to chip in resources human resources or technical assistance, technical equipment. Here where the EU policy makers made a significant step forward in 2019 when they reached an agreement for front text to establish a standing core of up to 10,000 members by 2027 and 3000 of these offices will be agency so meaning EU stuff and you can imagine that means you stuff where you stuff regulations are applicable which were made for civil servants but which will now be applicable to operational colleagues who will be border guards at the external borders in various countries, exercising executive power so enormous challenges. I would like to ask the colleagues please to display quickly a short video we are having prepared for which is only two minutes I believe to display that please. I'm thrilled to be part of the first uniform service of the EU. I wanted to counter cross border crime and I believe that front text was the ideal platform to accomplish this goal. During my academic career I studied political science and organized crime. After completing my studies I had the opportunity to work with numerous police and armed forces and for international and European institutions too. After completing my standing core training I was deployed to Italy. Together with my colleagues we perform several tasks countering cross border crime search and rescue. Standing core officers are deployed at airports, land and sea borders. The national authorities count on us to support them in their daily tasks. My colleagues and I must hit the ground running and ensure that we deliver the highest professionalism to the national authorities with whom we work. In the future I would like to be more involved in search and rescue. At the moment I'm attending a course to become a rescue swimmer. I'm from Portugal and I have been a police officer for the last 14 years. I'm in the headquarters in Warsaw. This is my first deployment. I'm leading a team that coordinates the missions of standing core officers that are deployed on the European borders. My children are with me. They have the opportunity to live in a multicultural environment and to learn in that environment. So it's important for them and for me. I believe that standing core is a great help for every EU citizen. We help EU countries with border control and fighting crime. Being the first ones it means a lot. We were the chosen ones. I'm very proud because I believe we are a great team. Me and my colleagues work very well together. We all get along and our different backgrounds help us to make our work a success. I'm coming from Romania. I was investigating criminal cases for more than 23 years. Economic crimes, frauds, trafficking in human beings, smuggling of migrants and money laundering. For me moving to Frontex was like changing the width of the umbrella. I'm sure I can use my experience in helping Frontex to tackle cross-border crime. The security of Europe cannot be ensured without having a proper management at the external borders. The standing core is the first ever uniform service of the European Union, helping member states tackle the challenges that might appear at the external borders. From my personal perspective, having all these colleagues with different backgrounds, you never cease to learn from them and to enrich your knowledge in different areas. I have a family. When I work for Frontex, I work also for my family, for the generation to come, for those benefitting from the fact that I bring my expertise and my effort to secure Europe. Thank you very much. So with these pictures that you saw on the video on the first of the first EU uniform service men and women working hand in hand with national officers all wearing the EU flag in the armband is a very symbolic but also powerful signal that the EU is united when managing its common external borders. The standing core is not only a capability for the agency, but for the whole European border and Coast Guard that member states shall use to complement their national capacities when facing exceptional situations as well as for more routine border control operations and approximately 1250 members of the standing core, including almost 500 own officers are as we speak or as I speak deployed on the ground in different corners of our EU external borders, such as the Canary Islands, the Black Sea, Finnish land borders or major international airport hubs. In order to develop this new capability, the agency's budget experience a sharp increase in 2014 the agency's budget was around 93 million euros while in 2021, we have reached the 543 million euros, and this trend is meant to continue for the next years as our budget should amount to 785 million euros in 2023. We're witnessing some something unique in the EU administrative landscape with the transformation of Frontex into a new type of organization. The initial operational mandate was limited to the planning coordination and final evaluation of the operations but Frontex remained as any other EU agency and administrative body really. This changed with the new European border and Coast Guard regulations in the end of 2019 and the creation of the standing core with executive powers to be exercised under the command and control of the member states hosting the operation. It altered the very basic principle and form a division of tasks between the agency and member states where the execution of European policies, for instance, the enforcement of the Schengen border code rules was strictly and purely a task of the National Administration so that's the past. And now that is a joint responsibility. Our operational deployments are mainly tailored to respond to irregular migration pressure at various sections of the EU's external borders. In practice this may imply the deployment of border surveillance means such as aircrafts or vessels to prevent or at least detect migrants arriving irregularly. We always aim at cost efficiency in our operations so that these rather costly patrolling means are also used for detecting other smuggling activities falling in the remit of customs agencies or other cross border crime. We have for example, a very fruitful cooperation with F cut European fishery control agency where when our planes detect illegal fishing or pollution that is something we can of course and we are of course bringing to the attention of other agencies and law enforcement authorities. I can also here refer to the first deployment of a surveillance plane we are deploying in the channel in the North Sea region. These same surveillance means must be also at the disposal of the regional maritime rescue and coordination center in case of distress calls at sea. Our priority is always saving lives, but unfortunately loss of life remains a tragic reality not only at the use southern maritime borders or eastern land borders. Frontex aerial surveillance means broadcast distress calls to all vessels and aircraft sailing in the vicinity among those that can also be of course NGO vessels when patrolling in the Mediterranean for example. And these vessels may also inform frontex on search and rescue situation which will be then forward to the competent competent regional maritime rescue and coordination centers. We must stress that the smuggling networks are first and foremost responsible for for these situations as part of their business model, which may end up in real strategies. In fact, migrant smuggling is amongst the fastest growing criminal industries migrant smugglers adapt quickly to shifting demands and circumstances with new motors operandi and migratory routes and the migrant smuggling industry provides high profits and unfortunately still entails relatively low risk of punishment. From the approximately 10,000 facilitators being annually detected, probably very few will actually face criminal charges and law enforcement and judicial authorities encounter still some hurdles to successfully prosecute the perpetrators. This is the reason why frontex is intensifying cooperation with your poll, and very soon also with your just so that valuable evidence including migrant testimony themselves can enrich criminal investigations. We also expect that this cooperation with our EU internal security operational partners will also help us to deliver results in the fight against terrorism. The evidence at the external borders have already demonstrated the added value in the fight against cross border crime when working in close coordination with other EU and national law enforcement services following a multi disciplinary approach. Migrations also support migration and asylum management. And in many of the deployments we include specialized standing core members to help local authorities to properly interview the third country nationals who arrived. Currently at the external borders and with the support of interpreters and cultural mediators. We process these migrants, including national nationality determination biometric registration and referral to the competent authority when they need international protection or fall under another category of vulnerable people. We also expect to provide additional support to the local authorities in terms of security screening and registration. Once our standing core members will have the much needed access to the EU information systems like this. The agency support to the member states in the return of irregular migrants is also developing and the agency's initial legal mandate limited almost exclusively to the transportation and escort of the irregular migrants back to the third country has been considerably a much more integrated model, which should deliver better and more sustainable results, the pre return activities focus on support for the identification and documentation of the third country nationals with the support of liaison officers in third countries, also seeking the cooperation with authorities of the country of origin. This is being complemented with post return support to the individuals, including a reintegration package. We often or sometimes like a corporation from third countries of origin or transit or from the returnees themselves. However, they are also structural capacity gaps in national administrations that front takes specialized standing core services can help to fill. Front takes is also fostering the modernization and digitalization of national return management which should help in making the existing often cumbersome procedures more efficient. Modernization and digitalization process will affect even more border management activities in particular border checks with the entry into operations next year of the entry and exit information system and the systematic biometric enrollment and registration of third country nationals crossing the external border will constitute a major test for national border guard services and transport industry, including seaports and airports operators which need to change business processes train adequately the staff and install and test the required new equipment. Front takes is also here supporting member states to be ready in time with pilot project and technical assistance. We will host the central unit of the European travel information authorization system, which is in the new system, which should process its first in its first year around 40 million travel authorizations applications submitted by visa exempted third country nationals wishing to come and visit the shengen area. I didn't want to finish my intervention without referring to the extreme fluid geopolitical situation in our neighborhood and its direct impact for our border and migration management systems. During the 2015 crisis we all witnessed the importance of Turkey's role and the impact that the agreement had in stemming the flow of migrants and refugees in the GNC or in the Everest region. However, this success story had also its downside. Foreign leaders took note of the over reliance I think we can say of you member states of the EU in general in its neighboring countries to manage irregular migratory flows. We showed somehow that we are also vulnerable and hence we need to continue to develop our border and migration management capacity, capabilities and capacities independently of the arrangement. We can reach with transit third countries. In any ways, we can say that we also need a strategic autonomy when it comes to border and migration management capabilities. The case of Turkey was not an exception. We have seen in the past decade similar situation in other areas which had also traces of instrumentalization of migration. However, with the recent case of Belarus we see even a step further since in this case, the national state actors were directly involved in the organization transportation and facilitation of the irregular crossing of the external borders by the migrants. This was a tool to exercise political pressure on particularly neighboring EU member states as type of a new hybrid threat. We know that independently from the reinforcement of our border management systems, including our early warning mechanisms the sustainable solutions require important political steps which rely on the role of the European Union in the world. And in the capacity to project its interested and geopolitical powers in its neighborhood. The future is always uncertain, but the downward trend in numbers of irregular arrivals at the external borders we have witnessed since 2017 has already changed with an increase last year of 41%. From roughly a bit under 100,000 recorded irregular border crossings to 139 in 2021 and furthermore the major megatrends affecting integrated border management such as the change of demographic imbalances climate change are even here to stay. So with this I would like to to to finish my intervention and I would like to really thank you for the invitation once more in the attention and of course, looking forward to the questions and answers we might be looking at.