Despite the attacks it has been subjected to, the European border surveillance agency has seen its prerogatives constantly strengthened since its creation almost 20 years ago. For her new mandate, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced that she wanted to triple its staff, but without mentioning any questioning.
“ We must strengthen Frontex to make it more effective while fully respecting fundamental rights “, declared the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen Thursday, July 18, before the European Parliament, announcing his desire to triple the number of European border and coast guards to 30,000.
In almost 20 years of existence, Frontexwhose mission is to assist Member States in controlling the external borders of theEuropean Unionhas continued to see its prerogatives and budget strengthened over the course of its developments. Its missions include risk analysis, surveillance and management of maritime, air and land borders and participation in the financing of operations to return irregular migrants. Operations carried out by border guards made available to the agency by the Member States. For example, it can participate in the registration of migrants upon their arrival, as since 2018 in the framework of Operation Minerva in Spain where it helps the Spanish authorities to control passengers arriving by ferry from Morocco. After the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, Frontex was also mobilized to help Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania cope with the influx of refugees. The agency also collaborates with third countries, such as Albania and Tunisia.
After the 2015 migration crisis, which saw the arrival of more than a million migrants in Europe, it became the European Border and Coast Guard Agency in 2016, and its missions and resources were expanded. In 2019, a new regulation further increased its powers. It provides for the agency to intervene even when a State does not request it.
An exponential budget, contested efficiency
With this commitment to a new strengthening of Frontex, the President of the European Commission seems in any case to be responding to the rise of the extreme right in the last European elections and giving assurances to the ID and ECR groups, with which the Italian leader Giorgia Meloni is associated, but also to the conservatives of the EPP whose migration policy tends to come closer to that of the Eurosceptics.
For Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche, professor of public law at the University of Lyon 3 and member of the Convergences Migrations Institute, ” This strengthening of Frontex is in line with the logic of European Pact on Migration and Asylum adopted last spring, which focuses on strengthening external borders and provides for the outsourcing of migration control. Implementing this policy requires developing the agency’s resources to respond to it ” she analyzes.
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With a colossal budget of more than 845 million euros in 2023 compared to 6 million euros after its creation, it is the best-endowed European agency. An amount that provides for the deployment of 10,000 agents by 2027 alone. In comparison, Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche points out, the budget of the European Union asylum agency was 174 million euros in 2023. A differential that shows, she believes, that ” The goal is to protect borders rather than protect refugees. “.
And if, as specialists point out, as international law provides for all ships, Frontex must provide assistance to boats in distress, rescue at sea is not part of its mandate.
” Frontex’s mandate is part of the European Union’s security and repressive policy “, judges Brigitte Espuche, co-coordinator of the Migreurop collective which has investigated the practices of the European agency since its creation. For her, ” The agency’s mandate is in itself incompatible with respect for the rights of migrants ” Despite the ” language elements “emphasizing respect for fundamental rights with each reform,” she denounces, “ We are only strengthening an agency that has not succeeded in reducing migratory flows and which also attacks the rights of exiled people and puts their lives in danger. ” In 2021, she recalls, the Court of Auditors had also criticized the agency, describing it as “ not efficient enough “.
Mistreatment, repression, opacity…
In recent years, the Frontex agency has been the target of increasingly widespread criticism: since 2020, investigations and reports have followed one another, documenting and denouncing the involvement – direct or indirect – of the agency in violations of rights, ill-treatment and, above all, pushbacks illegal. These operations consist of returning migrants to countries outside the EU without allowing them to submit an asylum application, in violation of international law.
In October 2020, an investigation by several media outletsof which The Mirror and the New York Timesreported the involvement of Frontex agents in illegal pushbacks of migrants in the Aegean Sea. Following this, in 2021, The European Parliament had requested the freezing of part of the budget 2022 of Frontex until improvements have been made in the monitoring of fundamental rights. In April 2022, an investigation of the World and Lighthouse Reports accused the agency of having disguised illegal returns of migrants who had reached Greek waters as simple “ preventive operations at departure ” in Turkish waters.
In 2022, a Report of the Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) led to the resignation of the agency’s boss, Fabrice Leggeri, accused, among other things, of non-compliance with procedures and the law, and of illegal pushbacks of migrants at sea. The latter became MEP under the National Rally (RN) label after a victory in the last elections of June.
Calls for greater transparency and respect for human rights no longer come only from NGOs. On 28 February, it was the EU Ombudsman who sounded the alarm in a report on the sinking of theAdrianain June 2023, off the coast of Greece. A tragedy that cost the lives of at least 600 people, according to estimates. According to Emily O’Reilly, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency is “ unable to fully fulfil its fundamental rights obligations ” because of its dependence on EU member states when a migrant boat is in distress.
This argument is also often the one behind which the agency hides when it is accused of rights violations, shifting the responsibility onto the national authorities on which it is dependent, it defends itself, and which it only assists.
Lack of control and independence
“ There has been progress “with the establishment of a Consultative Forum for Fundamental Rights and a Fundamental Rights Officer, as well as the establishment of a complaints mechanism,” concedes Léo Blaise Fontfrede, a doctoral student in European and international law and author of a thesis on the European Union’s external agreements on migration. But in reality, this mechanism is overseen by the executive director, who decides whether there are any follow-ups to be taken. In fact, very few complaints are successful. “These instruments are also largely under-resourced in terms of personnel and budget,” he says. And the recruitment of fundamental rights agents has been slow, recalls Brigitte Espuche, which reveals, according to her, a lack of real will to change things.
Last February, a new one investigation published by The world revealed that Frontex’s fundamental rights office had been reporting for months on allegations of illegal pushbacks, ill-treatment and excessive use of force by border police in Bulgaria, warning of the risk that the agency could be implicated in these violations on the Turkish border. Its calls for an independent investigation had gone unheeded.
Several appeals have been lodged with the Court of Justice of the EU concerning violations of fundamental rights during return operations coordinated by the agency, but none have been successful, says Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche, for whom ” This impunity is problematic“In 2023, for example, the court ruled that Frontex could not be held liable for any damages after Syrian refugees who arrived in Grève in 2016 denounced their refoulement to Turkey, even though the situation in Syria, according to them, allowed them to claim international protection.
For Léo Blaise Fontfrede, it is necessary to ” rethinking the agency’s control mode, with the establishment of an external mechanism . Although the European Commission is the controlling institution, for the time being there is a representative from each state on the board of directors and they are the ones who give the guidelines without much control.»
” This agency is not reformablesays Brigitte Espuche, for whom ” she is out of control . It must be abolished to put an end to the violations that are being perpetrated in the name of border protection and with complete impunity. “.
Despite these repeated warnings, the European Union seems to remain deaf to criticism. Last March, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Yvla Johansson, said for her part: quite satisfied with the way Frontex works “, rejecting the “need major reform” She just conceded “challenges to be met”: “We need better training for his permanent body […] and more specialised staff; we need Member States to be quicker in deployments, but I do not believe we have a problem with fundamental rights” she added.
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