Conceptual model for minimization of threats caused by illegal immigrants to EU road freight carriers

Abstract

Trending processes in certain regions of Africa, Middle East and Asia forced many people to immigrate to Europe. According to Eurostat, EU member states received over 1.39 million first-time asylum applications in 2015. There are two main paths, which are used by migrants to get to the Europe: • the Mediterranean Sea (sea- transport ); • South-Eastern Europe road (land- transport). After arriving to Europe’s periphery, migrants apply for the asylum, or move to the predetermined countries. However, long-time frame for assessing asylum applications or frequent rejections encourages refugees to migrate illegally.During 2015, 1.82 million people were detained and arrested while attempting to cross the borders of the EU states illegally. As Europe is mainly covered by land, the illegal immigrants use land transport. From the land transport types, 27% illegal immigrants use road freight transport [1]. The intrusion of illegal immigrants into road freight vehicles to cross borders without being noticed has caused a great deal of damage to road freight transportation companies. The interruptions to road freight transport unit might disrupt the work of global supply chains [2]. It is difficult to eliminate various types of interruptions at the stage of operation [3]. The safety of the load, sent by road transport meets internal (predictable risk, e.g. a delay) and external risks (unpredictable risk, crime or hurricane). [4]. The worst risk of disruption is the one which is unpredictable, such as natural or man-made disruption, disaster or catastrophe. [5].Because of the human ability to think, relying not only on instincts makes a person unpredictable. The unpredictability means the inability to control the future actions or ongoing processes. The present paper provides an overview of threats which might come up from transportation as a Supply chain activity and the unpredictable human factor in transportation, which arise because of the European Migrant Crisis. Moreover, article discusses conceptual model which might be useful in order to minimize the effect of identified threats.