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confronted with a wider variety of nationalities, and probably also a greater diversity of
facilitation networks, further complicating the tasks of law-enforcement authorities.
This risk is interlinked with the risk of criminal groups facilitating secondary movements and
the risk of border-control authorities faced with large flows of people in search of
international protection.
1.7.2. Risk of document fraud to circumvent border-control measures
The use of biometric travel documents renders document fraud increasingly difficult.
Nevertheless, facilitators are developing new techniques to circumvent biometric checks,
such as using supporting documents to fraudulently obtain authentic travel documents, or
using impostor techniques. Consistent with the distribution of regular passengers among
border types (land, air and sea), this risk is mostly associated with passenger entries at the
external air borders, and to a lesser extent at the land borders.
Fraud is expected mostly among EU travel documents (e.g. passports, visas and ID cards) and
there are indications of a shift away from the use of passports towards less sophisticated
documents such as ID cards and residence permits.
Member States experience pressure from an extensive range of forgery techniques applied to
many types of documents and used by a very wide assortment of nationalities. Such a broad
landscape of document fraud inevitably renders profiling and effective control extremely
challenging, and confirms the utility of developing systematic analyses, alerts and operational
support at the EU level.
Document fraud allows migrants to illegally enter the territory of a Member State, and then
to move freely within the EU. In addition, assuming a false identity and operating within black
markets seriously undermines international criminal investigations, national social systems
and the ability of any state to effectively manage and protect its legitimate communities.
Document fraud progressively demands closer and stronger links to organised crime because
modern documents require more skilled and expensive techniques to produce quality
forgeries, and because the emerging trend of impersonation has created an illegal market
place for large volumes of stolen or complicity supplied documents.
1.7.3. Risk of renewed large numbers of illegal border-crossings at the southern
maritime border
The likelihood of large numbers of illegal border-crossings at the southern maritime border
remains very high, either in the form of sporadic episodes similar to those reported in 2011 or
in sustained flows on specific routes originating from Africa.
Irregular-migration flows at the southern maritime borders are expected to be concentrated
within one of three known routes, i.e. the Central Mediterranean route, the Western
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