Today, Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri visited INTERPOL to launch Frontex-INTERPOL Electronic Library Document System (FIELDS). Together with the Secretary General of Interpol Jürgen Stock and the Director of French Border Police Fernand Gontier, he took part in a demonstration of the system at the Lyon Airport.
“Frontex’s cooperation with INTERPOL touches upon many areas of common interests. Since Frontex’s new mandate in 2019, this cooperation has intensified. The FIELDS we launch today is one of its most tangible results,” said Fabrice Leggeri.
“Today’s threat landscape is more complex than ever, making strong border management essential. FIELDS will bring global specialist knowledge in an effective, and vital, flow of information to frontline officers,” said INTERPOL Secretary General Jürgen Stock.
FIELDS is a system that provides information on travel documents, such as their security features. This information was collected by Frontex and is used directly for border control and document checks by law enforcement authorities of the Member States. The system is designed to display original and genuine documents and the main forgeries detected on that type of document. It will facilitate the work of first-line border control officers, as it is a fast and easy to use search engine to support immediate operational decision making while performing document checks.
Document fraud is recognised as a global challenge for migration management. It is the driver of many other criminal activities, such as migrant smuggling and trafficking, terrorist mobility, smuggling of drugs or weapons.
