WILLEMSTAD - The Council for Law Enforcement (RvR) notes that hardly any concrete plans and actions have been taken in recent years to implement its recommendations for better border control in Curaçao. The Council's conclusion is therefore that border control in Curaçao is "not up to standard" and that the recommendations from an earlier report must still be implemented.

The RvR writes this in a review in response to an investigation by the Council in 2013 on border control in Curaçao in which various bottlenecks and shortcomings emerged.

According to the Council, one of the bottlenecks is that there is still too little cooperation between border guards.

For example, the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee (KMar) was no longer deployed at the airport at the time of the investigation because the flex pool agreement had expired.

In addition, the coast guard does not have sufficient capacity to carry out all shipping inspections, such as sample inspections at the Venezuelan boats. And the fact that the other services also have to contend with a lack of staff and funds stands in the way of more intensive cooperation.

The Council therefore concludes that due to a lack of cooperation, important border duties (maritime and at the airport) are not being carried out effectively. The Council is, however, "pleased" to see that the services recognize the importance of cooperation and have organized a working conference in which all partners were represented in the border control of the countries of the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. The Council hopes that this has taken a first step towards concrete forms of cooperation.

The Council further notes that the powers of the border guards - for example, stopping for questioning and conducting investigations of clothing - have not yet been explicitly included in the law. This was a recommendation of the council in 2013 and has therefore not been followed. According to the Council, the measures are "radical means of restraint that have a restrictive nature", so that powers to do this belong in the law.

The "Mutual arrangement for cooperation in the area of ​​the immigration chain" has also not been implemented yet, writes the RvR.