OPEN BORDERS RAISE CONCERNS IN W. EUROPE

"The easier we make it for people to get in, the more we will help to promote human trafficking and drug trafficking," said Roger Helmer, a British Conservative member of the European Parliament. Large parts of the new outer border, which will stretch from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic, are unfenced. Hungary, one of the countries that will be joining, estimates that it catches less than a third of the people trying to enter its country illegally from Ukraine, according to the London Telegraph. "We all know that the eastern borders of the European Union ... are extremely porous and very poorly policed, and all the reports we get tell us that many thousands of people are just waiting there, queueing up by the border to enter the EU," Mr. Helmer said. "We've created a conveyor belt from former Soviet countries to immigrate into Europe." But supporters of the expansion say the potential problems are outweighed by the benefits. "There are worries in countries like Austria," which will no longer form the outer border with Eastern Europe, "that opening up their border will facilitate the work of criminal gangs," said Thomas Klau, a senior analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "It's a price you have to pay if you want to open up your borders, but some of the fears are vastly overblown. "Nobody will find that [is reason] enough to reintroduce border controls between the countries. You won't find anybody saying in the U.S. that they should reintroduce border controls between Virginia and Maryland," he said. Mr. Klau and other specialists point out that the new members have been required to meet high security standards on the new outer borders. The European Commission carried out 82 missions to make sure that border security and the visa system in the new countries were up to standards. Schengen advocates also point out that most recent terrorist attacks in Europe were carried out by persons who were already citizens in the countries where the attacks occurred. http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n1480/a08.html

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