Camp of the Saints: A German Perspective

Italy has 4,700 miles of coastline, all of it on the Mediterranean Sea and its subsidiaries. At the moment those bodies of water happen to be swarming with overloaded boats laden with cultural enrichment and bound for Italy. The Italian Coast Guard is struggling mightily to cope with a massive influx of migrants, none of whom it is allowed to mistreat or turn back.

In contrast, Germany has less than half as much coastline — about 2,200 miles — and all of it is along the Baltic or the North Sea, where there is little to fear from marauding Scots or Swedes.

Nevertheless, the German press, citing a European Commission report, finds Italian border controls to be somewhat lacking. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Italians are “sloppy”, and have thus brought the immigration crisis upon themselves by their own incompetence.

That’s according to an article published last Tuesday in Bild Illustrated, as translated by JLH. You’ll notice that most of the deficiencies have nothing to do with the real crisis — the flood of enrichment arriving daily at Lampedusa and other ports in southern Italy:

Italy Sloppy At Border Controls
by Einar Koch

Italy is becoming more and more a security risk for Europe. Hardly any other member state is so careless in border control!

In an internal note, which BILD has obtained, the EU commission reproves “substantial deficiencies” in connection with the Schengen information system (SIS).

In random checks at the beginning of April, the EU inspectors found the following evidence of carelessness:

• With the arrival of flights from outside the Schengen area, third-state passengers in the airports at Rome and Verona were not systematically traced by computer.
  
• The data in the police and border officials’ computers did not agree.
  
• The Italian national tracing system “was not accessible, stable and error-free on any of the random checking days.”
  
• The attitude of Italian authorities was “less than cooperative.”

So, for instance, the Italians impeded an unscheduled inspection of Rome’s Flumicino airport “giving as a reason official traffic” says the inspection report.

An unannounced, lightning visit of the EU inspectors at the offices near Verona was prevented by the Italians under the pretext that the delegation’s bus was not allowed to depart the district. Selected police officers could only be questioned generally beforehand by Italian authorities.

Due to an alleged computer malfunction, a carabinieri post in Verona was completely inaccessible to the EU inspectors.

Conclusion of the EU report: Italy’s border security system remains “far behind the usual Schengen standard.”