EU compliance means big bucks for private suppliers

Poland and the European Union (EU) last week wrapped up accession talks on justice and internal affairs, but the bloc set two conditions: Poland must employ 5,300 new professional border guards and invest heavily in equipment and infrastructure. For businesses, this translates into multimillion-złoty procurement contracts. "We have five priority (investment) categories," said Tomasz Pest, deputy director of the Bureau for International Cooperation and European Integration at Poland's Border Guard (SG) headquarters. "They are IT and telecommunications, training, personal gear, transport and observation equipment." Following the country's expected EU accession in 2004, Poland will have the longest border (including the Baltic coastline) with non-EU countries of all union members. "We will be the buffer country for the EU, just like Germany has been so far," Pest said. Because travel within the EU is largely unrestricted, smugglers and illegal immigrants must be stopped at the bloc's frontiers. Consequently, German and other border guards will eventually pass most of the job on to Polish forces. But Poland is far from ready for such a big task and must invest heavily in security personnel and infrastructure, EU negotiators said. Although Poland knows it will have to spend hundreds of millions of złotys over the next couple of years to tighten up its borders, the SG doesn't know how much money it can expect from the central budget.

"There is no precise total because the amount changes every year," said Wojciech Lechowski, Border Guard spokesman. Poland's border guard planned to spend zł. 99.5 million ($23.3 million) on equipment and zł. 110 million ($26.8 million) on construction projects next year, bringing total expenditures to zł. 210 million ($50.1 million). But according to Pest, this amount is merely what the SG would like to have, not what the central budget will be able to provide. "To learn the final number, we'll have to wait until next year's state budget is adopted," Lechowski said. Pest added that "there have even been cases where funds already assigned were later cut." SG's budget last year, excluding payroll but including all non-investment expenditures, amounted to zł. 780 million ($190.2 million). While Poland's financial contribution uncertain, Pest is sanguine about receiving financial aid from the EU, which he said will pay for about 20% of the guard's trai-ning and equipment needs via its PHARE program. "This money is sacrosanct," Pest said. "We've already received more than €50 million since 1997." PHARE supplied an average of €10 million annually to the SG, with the budget growing every year. Pest expects about €13 million from PHARE 2001, which is being contracted now, and €27.7 million for PHARE 2002.

Of the €13 million amount, some €10 million will be spent on thermal vision cameras and €3 million on the first stage of a radar system along the coastline. The radar system will be the biggest of all EU-cofinanced projects, Pest said. He estimates that PHARE 2002 will contribute €17.7 million to the system's second stage. He said it would cost about €25 million-€30 million for towers, equipment, infrastructure and command centers. "We're now preparing feasibility studies for this project," he said. The government has committed itself to employing some 5,300 new professional border guards by 2006. But they will also need uniforms, housing, equipment, weapons and vehicles. "A newly employed guard needs almost everything," Lechowski said. Last June the Border Guard bought 114 motorcycles from the Austria-based bike maker KTM for €1.2 million.

"The Border Guard continues to tighten up controls, so we're hoping for further procurements in the future," said Łukasz Wicher, the director of TW Consulting, the main importer of KTM bikes. Complying with the EU also mean lucrative orders for a number of other industries, including manufacturers of uniforms, aircraft, cars, photographic equipment, sensory facilities and IT and telecom infrastructure, according to SG officials. This year, the SG has already spent zł. 200,000 on personal computers, zł. 450,000 on servers, zł. 85,000 on printers and zł. 230,000 on Macintosh computers, Lechow-ski said. And Poland has committed itself to buil-ding 21 new guard stations along the Eastern border. Twelve have already been built, while another nine will be in place by 2004, he said. Each of these stations will cost about zł. 7 million ($1.7 million). "(Under communism), the eastern border was guarded by the Soviets and we didn't need any stations," Lechowski said. "Now, the situation has turned around."