Among the policies of the European Union, the control of external and internal borders is essential for the functioning and management of a common foreign policy. Let’s discover the agency that has been set up to better manage migration flows, the Border and Coast Guard Agency, more commonly known as FRONTEX.
Council Regulation (EC) 2007/2004 of 26 October 2004 established the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (Frontex). This Regulation was later repealed by Regulation (EU) 2016/1624 of 14 September 2016, replacing the former with the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. The last modification of FRONTEX’s mandate dates back to November 2019. As of that date, 10,000 border guards, escorts for returnees, return experts – have been added to the permanent European Border and Coast Guard Corp almost 10 times more than the 1,500 in the 2016/7 Regulation.
Who is FRONTEX composed of? And what does it do?
Frontex is composed of an Executive Director, a Management Board and a Human Rights Officer. The Executive Director, currently Fabrice Leggeri, is the legal representative of the agency and is elected by the Management Board on a proposal from the European Commission. Mr Leggeri is assisted by a Deputy Director. The Management Board is composed of representatives of the Member States which are signatories to the Schengen acquis – the set of rules and provisions, incorporated into EU law, to facilitate the free movement of citizens within the so-called Schengen area – and two members of the Commission. The members of the Council, elected every four years, supervise the Agency’s activities, set the budget – and check its implementation – and appoint the Director and his Deputy. Representatives of Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland may attend meetings, albeit with limited voting rights.
FRONTEX has always been based in the Polish capital, Krakow. Among its main roles, the agency is responsible for contributing to the integrated management of the external borders. In particular, its mandate includes analysing data on the internal and external situation at the EU’s borders and sharing it with the border authorities of the Member States.
All the activities of the agency are carried out through a common strategy, in order to be able to stimulate a coherent and systematic cooperation between the Member States. Indeed, among other tasks, FRONTEX assists Member States in the vocational training of border guards.
In support of control activities, a number of technological support tools have been implemented for the exchange of information and personal data of persons entering the EU. For example, FRONTEX takes care of screening, debriefing, identification and fingerprinting, transferring this information to the competent national offices of international protection applications and, at the same time, cooperating with the European Asylum Support Office (EASO).
With regard to fingerprinting, the EURODAC system was set up in the context of the Dublin Regulation to detect whether a person has already applied for international protection in a Member State. EURODAC is a veritable storehouse of the fingerprints of people entering Europe from third countries.
The agency also deals with the different cases of returnees. These include: forced returns of those who have exhausted all legal paths to legitimise their stay within the EU; voluntary departures of third-country nationals who have been issued return decisions.
Before understanding how FRONTEX works, it may be useful to summarise the main migration routes taken by an increasing number of people to reach Europe.
– Western Mediterranean route: from Morocco to Spain
– Balkan route: mainly from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, via the Baltic countries – Hungary, Croatia, Romania or Serbia – to northern Europe, often ending up in Germany
– Eastern route: from Syria via Turkey to Greece.
– Central route: from Libya/Tunisia/Algeria to reach the Italian coast.
– Eastern borders: this is a route not yet known and it concerns mainly Ukrainians, Russians and, to a lesser extent, Belarusians and Moldovans. Most of them they cross the Polish and Romanian borders with Ukraine. Most of these cases were associated with smuggling or other non-migration related reasons. In addition, Vietnamese nationals mainly have been identified near the Latvian-Russian borders, while Afghans were more detected in the Hungarian-Ukrainian section.
– Arctic route: most cases from Afghanistan and Syria to Norway and Finland.
Let’s discover FRONTEX’s action in the field of border surveillance and rescue at sea: how and where it acts or it acted.
A) Greece: operation Poseidon has been active since 2006 and it focuses on the eastern Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey and Greece’s borders with Albania, Turkey and Bulgaria. 26 EU and Schengen Member States participate with almost 900 border guards and 14 vessels.
B) Italy: operation Themis started in 2018, replacing the previous mission Triton, in the waters of the central Mediterranean, controlling two of the main migration routes: the one between Italy, Albania and Turkey and the one between Italy, Libya and Algeria.
C) Spain: here FRONTEX launched three different operations, given the important migration flows affecting the coast between Spain and Morocco.
The first was operation Hera (2006): migrants travelled to the Canary Islands, making the short journey in boats so small and dilapidated that each trip was highly risky. Hera was implemented with the help of Italy, Germany, France, Portugal and later the Netherlands, the UK and Norway as third states.
The possibility of including third states is included in the agency’s regulation, but already before its formal addition Frontex used this type of cooperation on the basis of the principle of parallelism of competences. Two extensions of this operation followed.
A second area concerned is Almeria and Algeciras, where Frontex set up operation Minerva in 2007 with the massive support of other European countries. The coastal area of Andalusia is another area strongly affected by migration flows; operation Indalo (2007) was aimed at controlling the Algeria-Morocco-Spain route.
FRONTEX’s missions are part of those sensitive issues directly linked to the fate of human beings seeking better life prospects far from their homes. Fundamental rights are therefore at the heart of the internal security issues that FRONTEX officers deal with on a daily basis.
In recent years, a number of controversies have arisen regarding the work of this agency in relation to the unauthorised refoulement of migrants at European borders. For instance, a lack of transparency in its activities has been repeatedly denounced. At the same time, the Management Board of the same agency declared on 21 January that there was no evidence of FRONTEX’s involvement in illegal refoulement practices.
Discussions and investigations, including into possible fraud or sexual abuse, are still an important item on the European agenda, despite the fact that FRONTEX has such a wide autonomy to protect its mandate from action by external bodies.
Large Movements will devote a specific chapter to the legal, or illegal, action of FRONTEX, because in the framework of the mandate of such an important agency, the respect for fundamental rights is imperative and violations cannot be silenced, even when they are perpetrated by the bodies responsible for safeguarding them.
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