Beefing Up Borders

At a cost of 525 million euros ($691 million), the system set up by European aerospace group EADS, will for the first time link all Romania's border posts to a central network and enable faster and more efficient passport checks.

But analysts differ over whether the enlargement of the EU's borders will cause a crisis as it puts the union next to Romania's poor neighbors Moldova and Ukraine.

A French military adviser to the Romanian interior ministry told the AFP news service that as of 2007 "there will certainly be strong pressure by clandestine immigrants, mainly from the third world, on Romania's border."

"No migration wave"

He said the immigrants would mostly come from Ukraine since Moldova "is the most closed and Sovietized country in the region," referring to that state's authoritarian government.

Political analyst Cristian Pirvulescu, however, said he did not think Romania's new role as the EU's border would set off "a wave of migration."

Those who wanted to emigrate to the West from countries like Moldova have already done so, Pirvulescu said.

In any case, Romania has updated its monitoring capability. Border posts will now have video cameras attached to a network covering the eastern Romanian border, which is over 2,070 kilometers (1,286 miles) long.

"We are a little worried in Romania because of the poor state of the roads and the lack of computers at certain border posts," EADS Global Security Senior Vice-President Markus Hellenthal said.

More fake passports

Some believe illegal immigration, especially from Moldova, could well increase after Romania joins the EU.

"It is true that we are finding more and more Moldavians with false Romanian passports and we arrest smugglers every day," said a security official at the Albita post, which is in Iasi, along the Serbian-Ukraine border.

Some 500,000 packets of cigarettes, worth an estimated 285,000 euros, were smuggled into Romania Between May and October.

Drug smuggling is down

"At 50 cents, a packet of cigarettes in the Ukraine is half as expensive as in Romania," said Ilie Poroch, commissioner of the Radauti border post with Ukraine.

Drug trafficking on the other hand is down: about 30 kilograms (66 pounds) were found in 2006, compared to 141 kilograms in 2005.

Arms trafficking is also low: less than 20 firearms and a few kilograms of explosives were recovered in 2006.

Smugglers of large volumes of light weapons, partly manufactured in the breakaway region of Transdniestr in northern Moldova, prefer to use alternative routes via the Black Sea and the Bosporus.