Police chief: Migrant crisis that hit Europe didn't affect Estonia

TALLINN - The migrant crisis that hit Europe has not had a significant effect on Estonia, director general of the Police and Border Guard Board Elmar Vaher said at a press conference on Thursday.

"Pressure on the Estonian border has eased. The threat on the Estonian border that we feared has not materialized," Vaher said. "The danger which we described to ourselves as the worst-case scenario by 2016, that the Arctic route in the migration crisis would extend to Estonia, did not materialize," the national police chief said.

He named the start of work to build border structures of the external border and efforts of the police to combat smuggling as factors that helped prevent migration pressure from materializing.

"It has to do with the proceedings in which we have very seriously prosecuted criminal associations and groups, the ones that organize traffic across the border, no matter whether it's contraband cigarettes, illegal migrants, or fuel. This has an effect too. Criminals are afraid to cross the Estonian border, they choose other routes for migration," Vaher said.

"We have also made serious efforts to catch on the border the individuals who are not welcome here," Vaher said. He said that during the year, 888 people were barred from entering Estonia.

"These were people who wanted to come here with bad things on their mind, or with a counterfeited visa or a counterfeited document, or were not able to explain on the border the purpose they had got their visa for," the police chief said.

"It happens more and more often that we have a person on the border who has been issued a visa to travel to Estonia as a tourist, to look at the sights here. Yet as a matter of fact, from the things they have with them, it is evident that the person will not stay in Estonia but wishes to use the Schengen area where there is no border control to move on to other countries," Vaher said. "Where earlier we could tell that their wish was to move on to Finland or Sweden, in 2016 we very often identified a wish to move on to Germany, Portugal, and Sweden," he said. "This demonstrates a change in the patterns of movement."

Vaher also highlighted Estonia's active role in the operations of the EU border agency Frontex and elsewhere, and the presence of Estonian liaison officers in Turkey, Italy, and Greece.

Domestically, Estonia has done a lot to improve migration surveillance so that the people who have arrived here illegally could be caught, which is an obligation under the Schengen arrangement, the police chief added.