By IRNA
Berlin : The 11th European Police Congress has opened in Berlin to assess the impact of lifting many European Union border controls on the overall situation of Europe’s security situation.
Addressing the opening session of the European police confab, European Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini urged stepped up cooperation among security officials of EU member states following the removal of border checkpoints.
Frattini called for the formation of joint investigative teams and boosting cross-border information exchanges as well as a new electronic entry system to secure EU’s exterior borders.
The two-day police congress comes in the wake of repeated news reports about a major increase in the number of illegal entries after the recent official lifting of borders between Germany and its eastern European Union neighbors, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Earlier this month, the German Interior Ministry announced that there had been no “significant rise” in the number of illegal entries.
A spokesman for the interior ministry cited statistics released by the Federal Police which showed there had been 425 cases of illegal entries for the period between December 21 and January 9.
The daily Bild newspaper had reported in mid-January that 614 people had entered Germany illegally.
Bild added that the figure for the first half of 2007, before Poland and the Czech Republic joined the so-called ‘Schengen’ zone, stood at 484.