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"As hundreds of thousands of refugees clamor to get in, mounting anxiety over Europe\u2019s porous borders has generated a lucrative opportunity for companies clever at keeping people out.\nThe chief beneficiary may be Europe\u2019s defense industry, which in recent years has suffered steep budget cuts at home and stiff competition abroad.\n\u201CThe European arms industry has faced significant problems in the declining demand for defense projects,\u201D said Pieter Wezeman, a defense industry expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).\nFrom 2005 to 2014, defense budgets in Western and Central Europe fell by 8.3% in real terms, according to SIPRI\u2019s analysis.\nThe current refugee crisis may offer a chance for defense firms to capitalize on an expanding market in border control and surveillance, according to Wezeman. Military technology \u2013 like satellites, sensors, and drones \u2013 is being repurposed to meet rising demands for border security. \nThe timing couldn\u2019t be better. In its 2013 annual report, Italy\u2019s Finmeccanica, a leading defense contractor, said that rising demand for border security and surveillance has been offsetting losses in traditional military orders.\nAccording to market analysis group Frost &amp;amp; Sullivan, the global border and maritime security industry was worth $29.3 billion in 2012. By 2022, that market is estimated to reach $56.5 billion. \nWhich companies stand to benefit from this growth? According to SIPRI\u2019s most recent global ranking, the largest European defense players are Finmeccanica, the UK\u2019s BAE Systems, France\u2019s Thales, and European multinational Airbus, formerly EADS.\nBorder control is already a core piece of these companies\u2019 export portfolios. These firms have secured contracts for high-profile and high-tech border security projects in the Middle East and North Africa \u2013 in Libya and Saudi Arabia, for instance \u2013 worth billions of euros. But the present crisis provides an opening for defense firms to expand profits in their own backyard. \nIt is difficult to track border security contracts since much of the technology is dual purpose. Are maritime sensors on Italian naval vessels a border control technology, or a military one? How about drones, or space-based surveillance? \nWhile the refugee crisis has focused new attention on how Europe handles its borders, European Union research and development (R&amp;amp;D) funding for border control technology, funneled through European defense contractors, is nothing new. For example, from 2002 to 2013, Airbus, Finmeccanica, and Thales\u2014largely through subsidiaries\u2014have collected the lion\u2019s share of 225 million euros to thicken the defenses of \u201CFortress Europe\u201D through the development of drones, olfactory sensors, and border patrol robots.\nEurope\u2019s big defense companies have assumed key roles on projects contributing to EUROSUR, an EU-funded surveillance system that uses drones, reconnaissance aircraft, and satellites to monitor Europe\u2019s external borders. \n\u201CPerseus,\u201D which integrates new and old sensor technologies on Europe\u2019s seas and borders, is worth 43.6 million euros and includes a roster of defense partners, including Airbus, Saab, and Boeing. And \u201CSeabilla,\u201D a maritime surveillance project covering Europe\u2019s Mediterranean, English Channel and Atlantic coasts, has cost 15.5 million euros. The project is coordinated by Selex, a Finmeccanica subsidiary, and includes Thales and BAE. \nImplementing new technologies, and integrating them into a pan-European surveillance capability, will likely continue to boost the defense industry\u2019s bottom line. The European Commission estimates EUROSUR will cost 244 million euros between 2014 and 2020, though critics expect it will cost far more.\nThe prominent role of defense contractors in supplying border services has prompted concerns about accountability and the rise of a \u201Csecurity-industrial\u201D complex. Security working groups, which steer EU policy, are packed with industry representatives, according to the Migrants Files, a consortium of 15 European journalists. At the same time, these working groups lack adequate representation from the International Organization for Migration or UNHCR, the United Nations\u2019 refugee agency.\nAccording to the EU Observer, the security industry\u2019s Belgium-based trade group EOS has played a significant role in EU border security legislation. Policies create industries, say the critics, which may in turn influence policy.\nThe drone industry is one example, some argue, of how commercial motives influence policy decisions. Ilka Laitinen, executive director of Frontex\u2014the EU\u2019s border control agency\u2014told the EU Observer that drones provide a cost-effective way to monitor Europe\u2019s borders and conduct search-and-rescue missions in the Mediterranean, saving refugees in distress. Yet it is not only the refugees who are in distress: The push for greater investment in aerial surveillance parallels commercial anxieties that Europe lags behind American and Israeli competitors in an emerging drone industry that could be worth billions. According to a 2014 market assessment by the Teal Group, global drone expenditures are expected to nearly double from $6.4 billion to $11.5 billion over the next decade.\nIn recent days, border fortification has intensified. Perhaps most dramatically, Hungary, which first pierced the iron curtain in 1989 by opening its border to Austria, is building a 109-mile stretch of razor wire intended to keep refugees from slipping in from Serbia. Critics say such efforts are futile and potentially dangerous. They certainly don\u2019t address the conflicts and misery that led many to leave home and chance the Aegean in inflatable rafts, or pack into smugglers\u2019 ships to cross the Mediterranean, which Human Rights Watch has called the \u201Cworld\u2019s deadliest migration route.\u201D\nStrict border controls simply raises the prices refugees have to pay smugglers, as well as the risks of getting in. This explains, in part, some of 2015\u2019s calamities: the 800 migrants and refugees who drowned off the coast of Italy\u2019s Lampedusa in April, and last month\u2019s discovery of 71 people who had suffocated in the back of a lorry abandoned near the Austrian border.\n\u201CLots of money goes into border controls, but this does not address the causes of migration,\u201D said Hein de Haas, a professor of migration studies at the University of Amsterdam and former director of the International Migration Institute at Oxford University. \u201CInstead, it helps two groups,\u201D he said. \u201CThe smugglers and the migration control industry, while the suffering and border deaths among migrants and refugees increase.\u201D\nStill, the money spigot is unlikely to be switched off any time soon, creating commercial opportunities but also, some fret, presenting a threat to broader European aspirations. The current crisis undermines the idea of a borderless Europe, articulated under the Schengen Agreement of 1985, according to analysis from Stratfor, a global intelligence firm. \nIf walls continue popping up along Europe\u2019s external borders, it may serve only to intensify the present dynamics. Between the smugglers trying to find a way in, and the private firms tasked with keeping them out, the ones likely to remain caught in the middle are the refugees."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://fortune.com/2015/09/10/europe-migrant-crisis-defense-contractors/>