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European Parliament
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European Border Surveillance System (Eurosur)

2011/0427(COD)

The Commission staff working document concerns the evaluation of the Regulation (EU) No 1052/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the European Border Surveillance System (EUROSUR).

As a reminder, the EUROSUR Regulation requires the Commission to produce a report on the overall evaluation of EUROSUR by 1 December 2016 and every four years thereafter. This evaluation should examine the results achieved against the objectives set and include an assessment of the continuing validity of the underlying rationale, the application of the EUROSUR Regulation in the Member States and by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (FRONTEX) now referred to as the Agency, and compliance with and impact on fundamental rights.

However, following the adoption of the European Agenda on Migration and of the European Border and Coast Guard Regulation, the Commission postponed the evaluation of EUROSUR in order to take into account the changes that they induced on the implementation of EUROSUR and on its evaluation.

Methodology: this evaluation assesses the performance of the EUROSUR Regulation, i.e. whether it has achieved its objectives, whether it is efficient, coherent, and relevant and has an added value at the EU level. 

  • Relevance: a majority of Member States and the Agency consider that EUROSUR is relevant to prevent illegal immigration and fight cross border crime. Many examples were reported of cases where the information exchanged with the Agency and between Member States in the context of EUROSUR allowed stopping smuggling of drugs, weapons, cigarettes and other illicit goods and also of human beings and to apprehend smugglers which were then brought to court. Since the adoption of the EUROSUR Regulation, the major evolution having a strong impact on the border surveillance and management policy area was the migrant-crisis, in particular the use of the Western Balkan Route in 2015 and 2016, and the increase of the terrorist threat with a number of attacks in Europe. These both reinforce the need to have a stronger and wider border management framework for cooperation between the Member States and the Agency.
  • Effectiveness: overall EUROSUR has positively contributed to information exchange and interagency cooperation.
  • Coherence: the adoption of the European Border and Coast Guard (ECBG) regulation sets a new ground for information exchange and cooperation both because of the further definition of the EU Integrated Border Management (IBM) and because of the new mandate given to the Agency. The ECBG Regulation describes new roles for the Agency which benefit or impact EUROSUR.
  • Efficiency: a majority of Member State and Agency experts estimate that the administrative burden generated by EUROSUR is marginal. The evaluation concluded that assessing the cost of implementation of EUROSUR has proven difficult. The funding sources used for the implementation of the actions foreseen in the EUROSUR Regulation come from different strands, i.e. Member States’ national budgets, the EBCG Agency’s budget and several EU funding instruments. The majority of the Member States’ experts and the Agency considers that the benefits of EUROSUR overweighed its costs.

Implementation: overall, the implementation of the Regulation by the Agency has been achieved. However, the Commission considered that some aspects can be improved, most of which are related to the network availability and its accreditation, data quality and the lack of information available. 

Improving EUROSUR: the evaluation has identified a few areas where technical amendments in the EUROSUR regulation could improve the functioning of EUROSUR while preserving the mechanism set by the Regulation which proved very successful. These areas include, inter alia:

  • redefining situational pictures;
  • better definition of EUROSUR data policies;
  • increased information security;
  • improving reaction capabilities;
  • enlarging the scope of EUROSUR in order to address additional aspects of border management (systematic inclusion of border crossing points and air border surveillance, reporting on secondary movements);
  • developing new EUROSUR Fusion Services and cooperation with third parties;
  • ensuring coherence with the European Border and Coast Guard Regulation;
  • reinforcing the competences of the National Coordination Centres (NCC);
  • reinforcing the competence of the Agency to cover a wider and more coherent spectrum of border management related activities in support of Member States.