Europe’s techno borders

By Chris Jones, Romain Lanneau, Yasha Maccanico

The use of new technologies is fundamental to the EU’s system of border control and migration management. This report explores their development and deployment over the last three decades, during which time an extensive infrastructure of surveillance systems, databases, biometric identification techniques and information networks has been put in place to provide state authorities with knowledge of – and thus control over – foreign nationals seeking to enter EU or staying in Schengen territory. Digital technologies underpin invasions of privacy, brutal violations of human rights, and make the border ‘mobile’, for example through the increased use of mobile biometric identification technologies, such as handheld fingerprint scanners used by police and border authorities. On the one hand, new technologies are deployed to facilitate the movements of “bona fide” travellers. In the years to come, tourists and businesspeople will be required to hand over increasing amounts of personal information to EU and member state authorities in exchange for being granted entry to the EU. That information will then be used to train algorithms that will be applied to new applications to enter the bloc, in order to assess the level of risk or threat posed by individuals (and, where that level is deemed too high, to deny them the ability to travel to the EU). On the other hand, new technologies are deployed to detect, deter and repel refugees and migrants seeking to enter EU territory through irregular journeys. Drones, cameras, social media monitoring, satellite imagery and networks of sensors form part of an elaborate surveillance architecture that is being continually extended. Those who do manage to enter EU territory – which is to say, if they are not illegally pushed back by EU authorities, or prevented from leaving a “third country” – are also biometrically registered and screened against a multitude of national and international databases. If they are deported, international data-sharing systems are increasingly being used to facilitate that task

London: Statewatch, 2023. 45p.