Frontex

European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders

Agency overview
Formed	26 november 2004
Dissolved	6 october 2016
Superseding agency	European Border and Coast Guard
Jurisdiction	European Union
Headquarters	Warsaw, Poland
Employees	344 (2015)
Annual budget	€ 254 million (2016)[1]
Agency executives	Fabrice Leggeri, Executive Director Ralf Göbel, Chairperson of the Management Board
Key document	Council Regulation (EC) No 2007/2004
Website	frontex.europa.eu

Frontex (from French: Frontières extérieures for "external borders") is an agency of the European Union established in 2004 to manage the cooperation between national border guards securing its external borders.

On 15 December 2015 the European Commission presented its proposal for a new European Border and Coast Guard Agency that would replace and succeed Frontex, having a stronger role and mandate and forming a European Border and Coast Guard along with national authorities for border management.

Responsibilities

Frontex was established by Council of Regulation (EC) 2007/2004.^[2] It began work on 3 October 2005 and was the first EU agency to be based in one of the new EU member states from 2004. Frontex' mission is to help European Union member states implement EU rules on external border controls and to coordinate cooperation between member states in external border management. While it remains the task of each member state to control its own borders, Frontex is vested to ensure that they all do so with the same high standard of efficiency. The agency's main tasks according to the Council Regulation are:^[2]

• coordinate cooperation between member states in external border management.
• assisting member states in training of national border guards.
• carrying out risk analyses.
• following research relevant for the control and surveillance of external borders.
• helping member states requiring technical and operational assistance at external borders.
• providing member states with the necessary support in organising joint return operations.

Staff and resources

Southern building of the Warsaw Spire office complex in Warsaw – seat of Frontex

The institution is centrally and hierarchically organised with a management board, consisting of one person of each member state as well as two members of the Commission. The member states representatives are operational heads of national security services concerned with border guard management. Frontex also has representatives from and works closely with Europol and Interpol. The Management Board is the leading component of the agency, controlling the personal, financial, and organisational structure, as well as initiating operative tasks in annual work programmes. Additionally, the Board appoints the Executive Director. The first and incumbent Director was Ilkka Laitinen.

The agency initially struggled to recruit staff^[3] due to its location in Warsaw, which offered lower pay than some other cities, and the unclear agency mandate. As of February 2012, the Frontex website listed its secretariat as consisting of 272 seconded national experts, temporary, auxiliary and contract staff. ^[4] The dependency of the organisation on staff secondments has been identified by external auditors as a risk, since valuable experience may be lost when such staff leave the organisation and return to their permanent jobs. ^[5]

Special European Border Forces of rapidly deployable border guards, called Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABIT) who are armed and patrol cross-country land borders, were created by EU interior ministers in April 2007 to assist in border control, particularly on Europe's southern coastlines.^[6] Frontex's European Patrols Network began work in the Canary Islands in May 2007^[7] and armed border force officers were deployed to the Greece–Turkey border in October 2010.^[8]

Besides EU members other Schengen area countries such as Iceland may carry out naval, land and air surveillance patrols; Iceland sent the Naval coast guard vessel Ægir to Frontex patrols in the Atlantic ocean south of Canary islands and the Mediterranean in 2010.^[9] Frontex uses satellite tracking of air and land borders as well as the EU-funded Sea Horse advanced satellite system to track ships.^[10]

Risk analysis reports

Frontex regularly releases reports analyzing events related to border control, irregular border crossing and different forms of cross-border crime. The general task of assessing these risks has been laid out in Frontex founding regulation, according to which the agency shall "carry out risk analyses [...] in order to provide the Community and the Member States with adequate information to allow for appropriate measures to be taken or to tackle identified threats and risks with a view to improving the integrated management of external borders".^[2] Frontex's key institution with respect to intelligence and risk assessment is its Risk Analysis Unit (RAU) and the Frontex Risk Analysis Network (FRAN), via which the Frontex staff is cooperating with security experts from the Member States.

The latest FRAN report as of 2013 stated that 24 805 illegal border-crossing were detected. In the Eastern Mediterranean area specifically at the land border between Greece and Turkey, illegal border-crossings were down by nearly 70% compared to the second quarter of 2012, but up in the Central Mediterranean route.^[11]

Operations

Hermes

"Joint Operation Hermes" began on 20 February 2011, after Italy asked for Frontex surveillance of the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and North Africa, the southern border of the EU being in the Sea.^[12] The Libyan no-fly zone came into effect subsequently, and combat operations started on 20 March 2011.

The Netherlands has a Coast Guard Dornier 228 aircraft with air force crew and Portugal, an air force C-295MPA, stationed at Malta and Pantelleria. The number of observed shiploads of people intending to illegally enter into the EU through this sector increased from 1,124 in the first quarter of 2013 to 5,311 in the second quarter of 2013.^[13]

African and other would-be illegal immigrants continue to set sail for Italian shores aboard unseaworthy boats and ships. Several of these attempts have ended with capsized boats and hundreds of people drowning in the sea, though the Italian navy has saved thousands of lives in its Operation Mare Nostrum.^[14]

Triton

Fabrice Leggeri, Executive Director of Frontex, in November 2015.

"Joint Operation Triton" is under Italian control and focuses on border security within 30 nautical miles of the Italian shore. It began on 1 November 2014 and involves 15 other European nations volunteering services, both EU member states and non-members. As of 2015 voluntary contributors are Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Romania, Poland, Lithuania and Malta.^[15] The operation's assets consist of two surveillance aircraft, three ships and seven teams of staff who gather intelligence and conduct screening and process identification. In 2014, its budget was estimated at €2.9 million per month.^[16]

After the April 2015 Libya migrant shipwrecks, in which about 800 refugees died, EU ministers proposed on 20 April 2015, to double the size of Operation Triton and to widen its mandate to conduct search and rescue operations across the Mediterranean Sea.^[17] Fabrice Leggeri, the head of Frontex, dismissed turning Triton into a search and rescue operation, saying it would "support and fuel the business of traffickers". Instead he recommended to expand air surveillance of the Maltese waters "anticipate more disasters.^[18]

Moria Hotspot

On 12 December 2015 it was reported that a newly founded asylum seeker reception center in Moria, Lesbos, Greece was coordinated, controlled and monitored by Frontex. In this center, in prison-like conditions, the asylum seekers were reported to undergo swift detention about their status for the purposes of registration. Independent journalists were reported to have had limited access to the facilities. While the reception center is not in the position to grant refugee status, it was reported that some asylum seekers could be held in the reception camp indefinitely. ^[19]

Poseidon

"Joint Operation Poseidon" began on 2006, after Greece asked for surveillance by Frontex of the country's sea and land borders between the EU-member Greece and Turkey. The Joint Operation is divided into two branches, the Poseidon Sea Operation which oversees the sea borders of the EU with Turkey in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas,^[20] and the Poseidon Land Operation which oversees the southeastern land border of the EU with Turkey on the Evros river.^[21] The operation turned permanent and has been expanded subsequently on the year 2011. In 2015 this operation was replaced by Poseidon Rapid Intervention.^[22]

Alleged Turkish airspace violations

In September 2009, a Turkish military radar issued a warning to a Latvian helicopter patrolling in the eastern Aegean—part of the EU's Frontex programme to combat illegal immigration—to leave the area. The Turkish General Staff reported that the Latvian Frontex aircraft had violated Turkish airspace west of Didim.^[23] According to a Hellenic Air Force announcement, the incident occurred as the Frontex helicopter—identified as an Italian-made Agusta A109—was patrolling in Greek airspace near the small isle of Farmakonisi, which lies on a favourite route used by migrant smugglers ferrying mostly Third World migrants into Greece and the EU from the opposite Turkish coastline.^[24] Frontex officials stated that they simply ignored the Turkish warnings as they were not in Turkish airspace and continued their duties. Frontex later took photographs of the Turkish Coast Guard escorting illegal immigrants towards Greek waters and the photos accompanied by written evidence were submitted to EU authorities.^[25]

Another incident took place on October 2009 in the airspace above the eastern Aegean sea, off the island of Lesbos.^[26] On 20 November 2009, the Turkish General Staff issued a press note alleging that an Estonian Border Guard aircraft Let L-410 UVP taking off from Kos on a Frontex mission had violated Turkish airspace west of Söke.^[23]

Criticism

In an NGO Statement on International Protection^[27] presented at the UNHCR Standing Committee in 2008 a broad coalition of non-governmental organisations have expressed their concern, that much of the rescue work by Frontex is in fact incidental to a deterrence campaign so broad and, at times, so undiscriminating, that directly and through third countries – intentionally or not – asylum-seekers are being blocked from claiming protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

According to European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) and British Refugee Council in written evidence submitted to the UK House of Lords inquiry, Frontex fails to demonstrate adequate consideration of international and European asylum and human rights law including the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and EU law in respect of access to asylum and the prohibition of refoulement.^[28]

In addition ECRE and British Refugee Council have expressed a worry with the lack of clarity regarding Frontex accountability for ensuring compliance with international and EC legal obligations by Member States involved in Frontex coordinated operations. This is compounded by the lack of transparency, and the absence of independent monitoring and democratic accountability of the Agency.

Replacement

On the 15 December 2015 the European Commission presented its proposal for a new European Border and Coast Guard to replace Frontex that would bolster existing national border agencies, along with the "right to intervene" in migrant hotspots, even if the member state concerned is opposed to such a measure ^[29]

See also

• Schengen Agreement
  • Schengen Information System
  • Eurodac
• Area of freedom, security and justice
• European Commissioner for Home Affairs
• Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs
• Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters
• Geography of the European Union
• Countries bordering the European Union
• Aegean dispute
• Eurosur

References

External links

• Official website
• Founding act of Frontex (PDF)
• Access to Protection in Europe—European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE)
• "Death on the southern border" Boemcken & Vollmer in E+Z/D+C, March 2015
• Tatort, the German TV crime series, broadcast "Der illegale Tod" on Dec 12, 2013 featuring a case in which Frontex was front and center Official website

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