Finland to participate in an EU border and customs mission on the Moldova-Ukraine border
Press release 372/2005
29 November, 2005
Finland will participate in a European Commission border and customs mission on the Moldova-Ukraine Border, to be officially launched on 1 December. The participants will include approximately 70 border experts from EU countries, five of them from Finland. A Finnish border expert has been chosen as deputy chief of the mission.
The objective of the mission is to strengthen the existing informational readiness and skills of Ukraine and Moldova to increase the efficiency of border and customs control. The mission also aims at providing assistance and advice to the border service, customs administration and other officials on how to control movement of goods and people. The goal is that the operation would support other EU Commission programmes aimed at strengthening the development of the border control service, customs administration and operation of law enforcement officials in Moldova and Ukraine. In order to further strengthen the support to border and customs activities on the Moldova-Ukraine border, the EU has also decided to reinforce the office of the EU Special Representative for Moldova with advisors.
The EU hopes that the mission would further the efforts to find a settlement to the long-standing conflict between Moldova and Transnistria. The mission is part of a more extensive EU support programme to promote democracy and economic development in the region, and to strengthen the state. The sorely needed reforms are based on the European Neighbourhood Policy Action Plan. In September, the EU and the United States were invited to join as observers the talks seeking a solution to the Transnistria conflict.
The EU is the biggest donor of assistance to Ukraine, and in 1991-2005 the assistance has amounted to over two billion euros. Total amount of EU support to Moldova in 1991-2003 was over 250 million euros.
Additional information: Counsellor Tiina Jortikka-Laitinen, Unit of Civilian Crisis Management, tel. +358 9 1605 5696, and Counsellor Tuula Yrjölä, Unit of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, tel. +358 40 740 9213.