Frontex

 ( Agencies Of The European Union ) 

• 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.

According to its third amended Budget 2015, the agency had in that year 336 employees. Additionally, the agency could make use of 78 employees which had been seconded from the member states. 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.

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. EU agrees rapid reaction anti-immigration units euobserver.com Frontex's European Patron Network began work in the Canary Islands in May 2007 EU border agency starts sea patrols euobserver.com and armed border force officers were deployed to the Greece–Turkey border in October 2010.

The new Agency was proposed by the European Commission on 15 December 2015 to strengthen Frontex, widely seen as being ineffective in the wake of the European migrant crisis. Support for the proposal has come from France and Germany.

The limitations of the former EU border agency, Frontex, hindered its ability to effectively address and remedy the situation created by the refugee crisis: it relied on the voluntary contributions by Member States as regards resources, it did not have its own operational staff and it did not have an explicit mandate to conduct search and rescue operations. The enhanced Agency will be strengthened and reinforced to address all these issues. The legal grounds for the proposal are article 77, paragraph 2(b) and (d), and article 79, paragraph 2 (c), of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Article 77 grants competence to the EU to adopt legislation on a "gradual introduction of an integrated management system for external borders," and article 79 authorizes the EU to enact legislation concerning the repatriation of third-country nationals residing illegally within the EU.

On 18 December 2015, the European Council roundly supported the proposal, which was then subjected to the ordinary legislative procedure. The Border and Coast Guard was officially launched on 6 October 2016 at the Bulgarian external border with Turkey.

On 4 December 2019, a regulation amending the mandate of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency ( Regulation 2019/1896) entered into force. The revised regulation gave the Agency a broader mandate by extending its powers in the following five areas: standing corps, EUROSUR, return operations, antenna offices, and extended cooperation with the third countries. Ever since Frontex was transformed into the Agency in 2016, the broader mandate has been deemed controversial, and the issue of whether the EU or the member state were competent in border management has also been a matter of debate. While announcing the future of Frontex during his State of the Union speech in 2015, the then European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called for "a more efficient" border management and stated that "there is not enough Europe in this Union and there is not enough union in this Union." Although the member states still retain the primary responsibility for border management, the Agency now has a broader mandate to initiate its own operations. Hence, with the growing executive powers of the Agency, the EU has a stronger role in the issue of border management. However, concerns regarding human rights violations are still being voiced, in particular, due to the broader executive powers of the Agency under the revised regulation.

The present agency is not a new body. It does not replace Frontex and it retains the same legal personality. What the Commission draft Regulation aims to do is to strengthen the mandate of the EU border agency, to increase its competences and to better equip it to carry out its operational activities. The new tasks and responsibilities of the Agency need to be reflected by its new name. It coordinates its work alongside the European Fisheries Control Agency and European Maritime Safety Agency with regard to coastguard functions. The permanent staff of the Agency was more than doubled between 2015 and 2020.

The Netherlands has a Coast Guard Dornier 228 aircraft with an 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.

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.Gavin Jones Italy says two boat migrants die, 1,500 saved as total passes 100,000 Reuters UK, 15 August 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 state and non-members. voluntary contributors are Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Malta and the United Kingdom. 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.

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. 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 expanding air surveillance of the Maltese waters "anticipate more disasters."

According to European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) and 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.

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

Reports have surfaced of video footage of FRONTEX violating the law, by helping the Greek coast guard block and push back asylum-seekers and migrants who have reached Greek territorial waters instead of rescuing them, which is their obligation under EU laws and regulations.

Despite a 2012 European Court of Human Rights ruling that refugees should not be returned to Libya, due to the risk of torture and violence, Frontex was criticised in April 2021 for supporting the Libyan Coast Guard to do so.

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