EU states warned of early crossings

The European Commission is stepping up its preparations for the "illegal immigration season" after warning that the crossings are expected to start early this year.

In a letter to all EU Interior Ministers, Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said: "The current mild weather improves the sailing conditions for the small vessels carrying illegal immigrants from Africa to the European Union enormously and may consequently lead to more arrivals at the southern external maritime borders much earlier than expected."

The EU should also be prepared for a scenario in which new migration routes are opened up by organised criminal networks, facilitating illegal immigration towards the EU and replacing routes "which we have been effective in controlling", Mr Frattini says in his letter, a copy of which has been seen by The Times.

In this context, he proposed bringing forward "the establishment of the pooling system considerably so that the EU's border control agency Frontex can deliver its progress report (on its state of preparedness) by the end of February".

Meeting in Dresden, Germany, earlier this month, EU Interior Ministers had been asked to supply, by the end of April, a list of personnel and equipment to be offered to Frontex for use in this year's planned maritime patrols against illegal immigration.

However, the Commission would now like to see this process being completed sooner to be in a better position to act. It does not want a repeat of last year's situation when it had to postpone the launch of its operations due to a lack of resources from individual member states.

Commissioner Frattini called on the ministers "to ensure that appropriate technical equipment is made available to the maximum extent possible".

He said the only way to achieve progress in this field was by taking action together.

Last year, for the first time, Frontex ran two separate anti-illegal immigration patrols, one off the Canary Islands and the other off Malta covering the Italy-Libya strait.

The latter was a 15-day operation in October dubbed Nautilus, during which no illegal immigrants landed on Malta's shores.