Baltic Sea Region Border Control Cooperation: First Baltic Border Committee under Danish Presidency

5-7 March 2019, Helsingør, Denmark. The first Baltic Border Committee (BBC) meeting under the Danish Presidency in the Baltic Sea Region Border Control Cooperation (BSRBCC) gathered representatives from the police, border and coast guard as well as customs authorities from Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden, as well as from the BSRBCC strategic partners: Frontex and the CBSS.

The Danish Presidency of the BSRBCC introduced the Action Plan for the upcoming year. The Action Plan is divided into several strategic actions including operational, training and education as well as analysis of data and intelligence sharing.

Three joint operations are planned to take place during the presidency: “Baltic Approach I”- focusing on border and customs control action on relevant border crossings or at sea, “Baltic Tracking 2019” – using the maritime assets to detect, track, combat and prevent illegal activities, and “Operation Cruise Ships” specifically targeting the cruise ships in the Baltic Sea. All three operations will include multilateral actions supporting the prevention and the combatting of illegal activities in the region.

The Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) will be conducted under the responsibility of the Danish Presidency, which will collect information and data from the member states and compile into the final report. The report will include short and precise descriptions from the perspectives of each member state. In addition, the report will outline a featured analysis focusing on the consequences of the EU visa liberalisation for Ukrainian and Georgian citizens.

Nina Jernberg represented the CBSS Secretariat at the meeting and reported on the relevant activities of the Secretariat, such as conference “Human Trafficking – a crime with too many victims and few investigations”, the application to DG HOME for “Treff BSR – CBRNE”,  “Goldfinger” project’s recent activities and the objectives of the “Baltic Sea Region Research Network on Societal Security”.