 Dear Minister Eduardo Cabrita, Dear Deputy Mayor of Cascar City, Dear Assistant Director Forensics and Police Data Management of Interpol, Directors, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues. I would like to welcome you to the first joint Frontex Interpol Conference on Document Fraud, organized by the two agencies together. In quality of the Executive Director of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, I am very pleased to open such an important event together with the Portuguese authorities and Interpol. I would like to thank you, Mr. Minister, for your presence today, and I would like to thank Portuguese authorities for hosting us in this wonderful place. I would also like to express my gratitude for the commitment and professionalism of Portuguese officers participating in many Frontex-coordinated activities. The beginning of our successful cooperation dates back to 2005, the year of the establishment of Frontex as an agency of the European Union. We gathered today to discuss a very important topic, travel document fraud. This increasingly important phenomenon has come under the spotlight in the context of the current migration flows, as well as terrorist attacks in Europe. Document fraud allows migrants who are in an irregular or undercommended situation to enter the territory of a member state illegally and subsequently to exploit the freedom of movement within the Schengen area. Document fraud is an enabler of terrorism and other types of organized crime, such as trafficking in human beings and people smuggling. The effective control of travel and identity documents at the borders is therefore a fundamental component of internal security and successful migration management. We can safely say that wherever it is necessary to establish a person's identity beyond any doubts, the validity of the travel or identity documents is of critical importance. Because of its importance for border control, Frontex, the European border and Coast Guard Agency stands at the forefront in the fight against document fraud at the European level. It is worth stressing that only this year we have detected more than 3,500 false documents in nearly 2,000 incidents during Frontex coordinated operations. To address this threat, Frontex has been active in combating document fraud at the EU external borders and on the so-called secondary movements within Europe. Our activities embrace a number of different areas, including situational awareness and risk analysis products, deployment of the document fraud experts in Frontex-coordinated joint operations, support of identification and registration of migrants, and the hotspot in Greece and Italy. Provision of training for document experts and finally various research projects. As of May this year, all these activities are supported by a formally established horizontal Frontex expert group on document control, comprising 85 experts in document fraud belonging to the European Union member states. To lend more weight to the support in documents fraud detection, we cooperate closely with Interpol for years already, seeking to bring assistance not only to the border guards but also to the police force in general. I would like to use this opportunity to inform you that taking the occasion of the ongoing reorganization of Frontex under the new mandate of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, and to mark the importance of document fraud in the work of the Agency, the management board of Frontex decided to endorse my initiative to establish the Center of Excellence for combating the document fraud. In the course of 2018, the Center will start providing support to Frontex-coordinated operational activities in addressing the challenge posed by document fraud. Dear minister, dear directors, ladies and gentlemen, many of our security measures rely on secure and trusted documents, such as checks at internal borders and those carried out within the territory of the member states. Valid documents are the credentials for entry to and exit from the territory of any state, including for crossing the external borders of the Schengen area. Document fraud is a global phenomenon, which requires a global response. That's why competent European organizations like Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, must join efforts and work closely with its international partners, such as the International Police Organization, Interpol, that has developed very relevant databases available at frontline activities for law enforcement. I hope our two-days meeting will also be the inception of a stable and practical cooperation between the national agencies present today at this first joint Interpol Frontex conference. Today, we will be exploring different possibilities of a more efficient use of international and European solutions, facilitating the work of law enforcement, recording the extent of the challenge posed by document fraud. We shall take into account the need of a global cooperation on this subject, which within clear rules established for exchanging information allow for achieving concrete operational results against document fraud. I hope our two-days meeting is just the start of a wider alliance focused on combating document fraud at the national, European and international level. With these thoughts, let's thank you again, Mr. Minister, for being present today with us. I would like to wish all participants a successful meeting, and I thank you very much for your attention.