EU Border Security

The ministers are expected to agree Tuesday, Sept. 18, on measures to strengthen border controls in a bid to reduce the number of illegal entries to the bloc each year, but the question of funding will be paramount to any decisions taken.

According to a draft document by the Portuguese presidency, the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council will "encourage" governments to "cooperate," "share responsibilities" and provide "support" to fellow member states, such as Malta, that are struggling to prevent the seemingly unstoppable tide of would-be immigrants who depart from ports in North Africa and enter the EU after crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

However, Frontex, the recently-established EU agency tasked with coordinating member states' border security, is unlikely to get any additional money to carry out its work.

EU governments believe that the responsibility for the control of external borders lies with individual member states and have accordingly granted a budget of just 40 million euros ($55 million) to the Warsaw-based agency.

Equipment received less than equipment pledged

Some of the EU's 27 member states, including Germany and Italy, have pledged to provide equipment to Frontex. But many of the total of 21 airplanes, 27 helicopters and more than 100 boats pledged to Frontex are assumed to not yet be at the agency's disposal.

The EU's justice and interior ministers consider the reinforcing of the bloc's southern maritime borders as a high priority because of the numerous reports over the summer months about would-be immigrants drowning during their ill-fated voyages across the Mediterranean Sea.

Experts say most of the illegal aliens who penetrate so-called "Fortress Europe" -- possibly as many as 500,000 per year, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) -- are believed to do so through the bloc's sketchily patrolled eastern land border or by simply catching a plane and entering the EU on a temporary tourist visa.

Schengen agreement topics also on agenda

Along with efforts to increase border controls in the fight against illegal immigrants, the day-long meeting will also involve discussions on the Schengen agreement allowing the abolition of systematic border controls between participating countries, the state of play of shared data among participating countries -- the so-called Schengen Information System -- and on the exchange of people's fingerprints and biometric data.

A total of 15 countries have so far implemented Schengen -- including non-EU states Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.

Nine new EU member states -- the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia -- have started using the Schengen information system as of Sept. 1, and the Portuguese presidency hopes that ministers meeting in Brussels will agree to abolish passport controls at airports for passengers traveling to and from these nine countries as of March 2008.

Unrelated thorny issues expected to feature

Issues that are not on Tuesday's official agenda, but which threaten to hijack it, include Polish opposition to a European Day against the death penalty, which has been scheduled for Oct. 10 and which Warsaw would like to widen to include abortion and euthanasia.

The mandate and profile of a new EU anti-terrorism coordinator is also likely to be a hot topic at the meeting. The coordinator post was created in 2004, in response to that year's train bombings in Madrid, but has been left vacant since March, when Gijs de Vries of the Netherlands resigned citing personal reasons.