Ilkka Pertti Juhani Laitinen (22 August 1962 – 29 September 2019) was a Finnish border guard officer, who served as the lieutenant general and the Chief of the

Finnish Border Guard The Finnish Border Guard (; ) is the agency responsible for enforcing the security of Finland's borders. It is a military organisation, subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior in administrative issues and to the President of Finland in issue ...

from 2018 to 2019. He was the first executive director of

Frontex The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, also known as Frontex (from French: ''Frontières extérieures'' for "external borders"), is an agency of the European Union headquartered in Warsaw, Poland, exercising in coordination with the borde ...

, the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

’s border protection agency, from 2005 until 2014. He served in the

in 1982 and since 1985. He rose to the rank of colonel in 2004 and held a wide variety of national and EU jobs. He was appointed as the first head of Frontex on 25 May 2005. Laitinen retired from the Finnish Border Guard due to ill health on 31 August 2019. He died on 29 September 2019, aged 57, due to illness.

References

*Finnish Ministry of the Interior
Press release ''Colonel Ilkka Laitinen appointed as Executive Director of the EU Borders Agency''
(2005-05-25) *Finnish Border Guard
Curriculum vitae of Ilkka Laitinen (in Finnish)Frontex official site
1962 births 2019 deaths People from Nurmes Finnish military personnel Finnish officials of the European Union European Border and Coast Guard People in border control {{Finland-bio-stub