Regulation (EU) 2019/1896 provides for the strengthening of the mandate of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (‘the Agency’) and for the provision of the necessary capabilities in the form of a European Border and Coast Guard standing corps (the ‘standing corps’).

The standing corps is to include operational staff contributed by Member States. In order to ensure Member States are in a position to contribute such staff, it is appropriate to establish a financial system intended to support the development of relevant human resources.

Financial support should be provided in the form of an annual payment made by the Agency to the Member States after the end of year N. It should also be possible for the Agency to grant an advance payment before the end of year N upon the request of a Member State.

Article 61(1), points (a), (b) and (c), of Regulation (EU) 2019/1896 lays down the calculation formulas for the annual payment corresponding to different categories of operational staff of the standing corps. The financial support to be granted is to be determined largely by reference to the level of Member States’ involvement in the standing corps for staff categories 2 and 3. A mechanism for compensating, in certain cases, the national services of Member States from where the Agency’s statutory staff is to be recruited (‘financing for category 1’) should also be included in the financial support system.

The calculation formulas for the annual payment should be based on the reference amount set out in Article 61(2) of Regulation (EU) 2019/1896.

In the interest of simplification and effective coordination, each Member State should designate one central national authority responsible for the management of financial support. A national contact point designated in accordance with Article 13 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1896 may also be designated as a central national authority.

In order to facilitate the preparation of requests for payments, the Agency should provide relevant information to the Member States, in particular information on the reference amounts and the number of persons recruited by the Agency from the national services.

In order to compensate training investments of the Member States for new personnel replacing staff departing from the national services, the Agency should only consider personnel who terminated their institutional relationship with the national authorities concerned permanently or suspended it during the period of their employment by the Agency.

For the fulfilment of the conditions related to financing for category 2 of the operational staff, the effective increase of the overall national border guard staffing should be measured against the situation on 30 April 2019, the day after the European Parliament and the Council reached political agreement on the text which became Regulation (EU) 2019/1896. The calculation should take into account the overall staffing of all the main authorities contributing systematically to the European Border and Coast Guard standing corps via secondments or, in the case of authorities having a wider mandate than the Agency’s operational activities supported via the standing corps, the staffing of the relevant entities within those authorities contributing via secondments.

The Member States should have in place mechanisms and procedures to avoid irregularities and fraud within the financial support system. In order to limit the administrative burden and the associated costs to the extent possible, such procedures and mechanisms should be targeted in the light of risk assessments.

With regard to the objective of supporting the preparation of Member States to contribute to the standing corps, it is important to make the financial support effectively available as soon as possible. Therefore, this Decision should enter into force already one day after its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

This Decision constitutes an act building upon, or otherwise relating to, the Schengen acquis within, respectively, the meaning of Article 3(1) of the 2003 Act of Accession, Article 4(1) of the 2005 Act of Accession and Article 4(1) of the 2011 Act of Accession.

The measures provided for in this Decision are in accordance with the opinion of the European Border and Coast Guard Committee,