Summary
The European Union supports Serbia to ensure borders are open for free movement of people and goods, and controlled and secured from illegal activities, in accordance with the EU principles. The Integrated Border Management (IBM) concept provides a model important for safeguarding national security and ensuring smooth border crossings for legitimate travellers.
The Sector Budget Support will improve management of irregular migration and fight against cross-border crime through better detection of smuggling of drugs, weapons, explosives, ammunition, goods, animals, as well as hazardous substances across the borders as well as investigating human trafficking and smuggling illegal immigrants. It will also ensure better intra-agency, inter-agency and international cooperation, coordination and liaison and exchange of information.
The complementary support will strengthen institutional capacities of the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection (Plant Protection Directorate and Department for Border Phyto-Sanitary Inspection, the Veterinary Directorate and the Department for Veterinary Sanitary Control at Border Inspection Posts) and the Ministry of Finance (Customs Administration) to implement the IBM Strategy and Action Plan. It will result in improved financial services, work procedures, better communication and interconnectivity and coordination mechanisms.
One Twinning project will support Serbia's efforts to meet the necessary institutional, technical and legal preconditions to establish a SIRENE Bureau - a single point of contact for information exchange and coordination of activities related to the Schengen Information System alerts. Competent authorities, such as police and border guards, enter and consult SIS alerts which include information on wanted or missing persons and also clear instructions on what to do when the person or object has been found.
Another Twinning project will support establishment of a unified national database for storing fingerprints of asylum seekers, to ensure that the national biometric database is fully compatible with ‘EURODAC’ (comparison of fingerprints), and train the staff to operate the national system.