Mobile Surveillance Operations at the Dutch borders Or restricting - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

• Mobile Surveillance Operations at the Dutch borders

Or restricting the right to free movement for dangerous others?

• Dr. M.A.H. (Maartje) van der Woude LLM

Institute for Criminal Law & Criminology

Crimmigration Control Conference Social Control and Justice, Crimmigration in an age of fear Coïmbra, October 11-12, 2012

• Crimmigration: Parallels in the execution of

criminal law and immigration law

Dutch Royal Military and Border Police

• Security
• Police task at civil airports
• Police task for the Ministry of Defense
• Providing assistance, support and cooperation to ‘regular’

police

• Enforcement of aliens legislation:
• border control;
• Mobile Monitoring of Aliens;
• supporting the asylum procedure.
• Criminal investigation
• Peace tasks and international tasks

• http://www.rnw.nl/english/video/germans-

upset-about-dutch-border-controls

• Mobile Monitoring of Aliens (MMA)

Introduced in 1994 as a way to monitor illegal migration to the Netherlands after the Schengen Area came in existence on 26 March 1995 MMA controls are carried out randomly at Schiphol airport, in the international harbors, on international trains and on the roads in the border areas with Germany and Belgium August 2012 introduction of @migoboras camera- system

• Mobile Monitoring of Aliens (MMA)

Purpose: Exclusively for combating illegal stay after crossing of the border

• a. at airports in relation to arrivals of flights from the Schengen

area;

• b. in trains during at most thirty minutes after passing the

common border with Belgium or Germany or, if the second train station is not yet reached within this period since the border was passed, not further than the second train station after the border;

• c. on roads and waterways in an area till twenty kilometres

from the common border with Belgium or Germany. (Article 4.17a Aliens decree 2000)

• MMA & @migoboras

“Smart” Camera’s placed immediately behind the internal border of a Member State Threefold purpose: 1) collecting and analyzing anonymous data for profiling; 2) observing vehicles and selecting those to be stopped and examined and 3) providing assistance when a quick alert is issued. Broadening the scope of the MMA? An effect equivalent to border checks? European Court of Justice: Aziz Melki (C-188/10) and Sélim Abdeli (C-189/10)

• MMA & @migoboras

“that national legislation granting a power to police authorities to carry out identity checks – a power which, first, is restricted to the border area of the Member State with other Member States and, second, does not depend upon the behaviour of the person checked or on specific circumstances giving rise to a risk of breach of public order – must provide the necessary framework for the power granted to those authorities in order, inter alia, to guide the discretion which those authorities enjoy in the practical application of that

• power. That framework must guarantee that the practical

exercise of that power, consisting in carrying out identity controls, cannot have an effect equivalent to border checks (…)”.

(point 74, ECJ)

• MMA & @migoboras

Article 2(10) Schengen Borders Code: “border checks” Meijers Committee (2012): “border checks”

• a. the surveillance aims expressly at controlling persons who

just crossed the internal borders;

• b. the surveillance aims at controlling whether these persons

are complying with the conditions for entry and stay in the country (which is equivalent to “combating illegal stay after the crossing of borders”);

• c. the surveillance is exercised on a systematic basis.

• MMA & @migoboras

Principle of Legal Certainty at stake? Article 4.17a Aliens Decree: “on the basis of information or experiences about illegal stay after crossing borders” Use of profiles in order to guide the discretionary decisions space of individual KMAR-agents But: for which purpose?

Mobile Monitoring of Aliens or Mobile Monitoring of Security

• Conclusion

Curtailing the right to free movement in the EU? For whom & why? @migoboras: more objective or more selective? For whom & why? Combating illegal stay or preventing transboundary forms of crime? Blurring of internal and external security – immigrants as enemies of the state?

• Annual Meetings Law & Society

Association

Various sponsored panel-sessions CRN Citizenship & Migration http://crn2.wordpress.com/ Boston May 30th – June 2, 2013 http://www.lawandsociety.org/ Interested in joining the CRN & our Listserv?

• Contact Information
• Dr. Maartje van der Woude LLM

Leiden University Law School Institute for Criminal Law & Criminology

m.a.h.vanderwoude@law.leidenuniv.nl