Superposition of legal regimes in border control and smuggling of migrants - the case of Republic of North Macedonia

Nikodinovska Krstevska, Ana and Kosevaliska, Olga (2021) Superposition of legal regimes in border control and smuggling of migrants - the case of Republic of North Macedonia. In: The superposition of legal regimes at sea: theoretical and practical challenges, 24-25 June 2021, University Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Ever since the migrant crisis had its peak in 2015, the Republic of Macedonia has declared a state of emergency on its southern and northern border in order to tackle the crisis. This state of emergency is being extended for every six months and currently in force until December 2019. The responsibility to manage the crisis is given to a special administrative body – The Center for crisis management, which is under Government authority. Actually, by declaring the state of emergency the country deployed riot police on borders, armored vehicles and engaged the Army in order to manage the crisis and to secure national borders. However, with the official closure of the Balkan migrant route, great pressure was registered on Macedonian-Greek border, and in particular, near the village of Idomeni, where a big number of migrants got stranded, many hostilities and incidents burst with the Macedonian armed forces. As a response to this, countries from the Visegrad group (Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia) but also others like Slovenia, Austria, Serbia and Croatia, signed international bilateral agreements in order to provide assistance and help with the management of the crisis. This cooperation permitted the deployment of national police officers on the southern Macedonian border, and empowered them to help with monitor and to give technical assistance to Macedonian armed forces, as well as to conduct activities of border control, interception of migrant smugglers, prevention of illegal entries and other. On the other hand, Macedonia also initialized a status agreement with the European Border and Coast Guard Agency that will allow FRONTEX to deploy teams to the country and to conduct joint operational activities in order to tackle challenges of irregular migration like control of migrant flow, cross-border crime, migrant smuggling, trafficking in human beings and terrorism.
Since little is publicly known about the different international agreements and the operational activities of the various foreign police patrols, a number of questions are being raised especially regarding the superposition of different legal regimes concerning border control and smuggling of migrants. For example, “What is the specific mandate and competence of the different foreign police patrols? Are their mandates in line with Macedonia’s national law? In what consists their contribution and assistance of border control and prevention of illegal migration on the Macedonian border? How can they tackle migrant smuggling? In case of suspicion for migrant smuggling, who has the right to stop and legitimize Macedonian citizens, and to what extent can foreign policy patrols search vehicles? Can foreign police officers act with coercive measures towards suspicious persons and can they take them in custody? What is the role of the foreign police officers in the criminal procedure? How and in what way do FRONTEX activities differ from those conducted by other EU Member States on a national level? Is there an overlap of competences? Etc. In short, the paper will try to answer some of the questions referred above in particular those related to border control and smuggling of migrants. This will be made by analyzing related documents and relevant literature, conducting interviews with targeted representatives from domestic and foreign institutions and by using other research data and methodology in order to have a complete picture of the research issue.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Subjects:	Social Sciences > Law
Divisions:	Faculty of Law
Depositing User:	Olga Kosevaliska
Date Deposited:	12 Aug 2021 09:01
Last Modified:	12 Aug 2021 09:01
URI:	https://eprints.ugd.edu.mk/id/eprint/28327

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