In 2023, there will be a total of 57 million passengers at national airports, 1.3 million more than in 2022, said the director of Airport Security and Border Control at the PSP, Nunes Teixeira.
The authorities increased the number of checks at national borders by 13% in 2023, José Luís Carneiro announced today, in an assessment of Portugal’s border control system.
“We have more than 750,000 passengers being checked at national airports, we have increased the number of checks carried out at national borders by more than 13%, which means that there is more security at national borders, air, sea and land,” the Minister of Internal Affairs told reporters on the sidelines of a GNR and PSP debriefing session on the subject.
In 2023, there will be a total of 57 million passengers at national airports, 1.3 million more than in 2022, said the director of Airport Security and Border Control at the PSP, Nunes Teixeira.
He admitted that the waiting time for controls at airports increased over the Christmas period due to the large influx of passengers (756,794 between December 15 and January 6), during which time the average waiting time at Lisbon airport was 85 minutes (23 more than the annual average), 78 entries were refused and 1,248 interceptions were made.
“It was a very demanding month in terms of resources,” acknowledged Nunes Teixeira.
For 2024, “an increase in flights is expected” from Europe outside the Schengen area (7 to 11%) and from outside the continent (11 to 14%).
A total of 732 police officers were on duty and 4,582 security operations were carried out, in a “new architecture that forced a review of the control system”, with the creation of police stations at airports. A further 150 police officers will be trained for airports by June.
In direct border control, in “January 2023, SEF had 374 police officers working and today there are 265 from the PSP and 290 men from the Judicial Police,” added Nunes Teixeira.
For his part, the head of the GNR’s Coastal and Border Control Unit, Marco Cruz, pointed out that the “maritime border ends up being one of the main points of activity” for the institution, with 312,720 entries by sea at the 21 border posts, with the majority coming from outside the Schengen area (175,148).
At the maritime border crossings, the Lisbon and Funchal terminals require the most resources, with 171,621 and 113,698 passengers checked, respectively. In total, 3,488 vessels were checked.
In operations on the ground, the GNR checked 1,115 foreign citizens, often on “farms”, as part of inspections, and “seven notices of administrative offense were issued to legal entities that had employees in an irregular situation on national territory”, he added.
SEF was abolished on October 29 and, since then, border control powers have been passed on to the PSP and GNR, which have shared responsibility for the territory’s border posts.