Frontex: The Looking Glass of EU Immigration Policy
A boat carrying a group of refugees across the Mediterranean to Greece. The European Union has expanded security in the sea to prevent such crossings. Photo by Mstyslav Chernov.
In his speech announcing the renewal of European Union (EU) funding for the Libyan Coast Guard earlier this month, European Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi expressed hope that the five new patrol boats would “highlight what the cooperation between the EU, our Member States and partner countries can collectively deliver.” Though aspirational in tone, the “cooperation” Vàrhelyi extols would be more aptly described as the “delegation” that has become representative of EU border policy in the Mediterranean. More than willing to recognize the outsourcing of border regulation, Várhelyi left the details of EU collaboration with groups like the Libyan Coast Guard in the margins. The patrol boats will soon become part of the Coast Guard’s growing fleet of vessels used to force refugees in the Mediterranean back to Libyan detention camps. And the European Union will remain complicit in the abuse the detainees inevitably are subject to.
As the impacts of the climate crisis become increasingly dire for those in the Global South and political violence drives displaced people to Europe’s shores, the European Union, as the quasi-governing body of the majority of countries on the continent, has responded with ambivalence. Struggling to reconcile the competing interests of member states divided by sentiments on migration and political leadership, the EU has failed to land on a cohesive policy towards immigration; this indecision and delegation within EU immigration policy is best embodied in the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, commonly known as Frontex.
Frontex was formed in 2004 to provide intergovernmental security along the external borders of member states. Oversight over its operations falls to the European Council and the European Parliament. The roles Frontex purports to fulfill are “the promotion, coordination, and development of European border management.” Up until 2015, however, Frontex was widely regarded by member states as an ineffective and understaffed bureaucratic patch over a growing wound. With less than 400 employees, Frontex is fundamentally unable to fulfill its mandate, and the European Migrant Crisis of 2015 brought this into sharp focus.
In 2015, the confluence of civil war in Syria and famine and political unrest in Northern Africa forced millions from their homes, fleeing across the Mediterranean and through the Balkans towards Europe. Over 1 million people sought asylum in EU member states that year. Owing to the clunky, uncoordinated response to the crisis, the EU was prompted to initiate a series of reforms to its asylum processing system and border enforcement resources. Frontex’s budget saw an increase of nearly 54%. Since the agency was granted a second wind, it has become an increasingly dominant actor across the Mediterranean, with a standing corps of border guards projected to number 10,000 by 2027. It recently entered into an arms contract with Airbus and an Israeli weapons manufacturer, and it boasts an arsenal of drones, helicopters, and reconnaissance planes.
Through these reforms, strategy to minimize the stream of refugees arriving via the Mediterranean became preemptive, rather than reactive. The EU relied heavily on outsourcing border security to Northern African countries, through which many migrants traveled to reach the sea. Along with the boats, guards, and funds provided to these countries of “origin and transit,” the governing body also surrendered control over processes of reception and standards of accountability for humanitarian charters. Through the process of externalizing border regulation to countries outside of the union—such as Morocco, Libya, and Turkey—the EU can voice its respect for humanitarian causes, accrediting Frontex’s efforts in the prevention of migrant deaths at sea, while funding the abuse of these migrants beyond its own borders. Nowhere is this hypocrisy better represented than one such contract involving the Libyan Coast Guard.
In 2015, the EU agreed to codify a previously informal relationship with the Libyan Coast Guard. In exchange for providing training and equipment, the Coast Guard would divert or turn back migrants who reached the Libyan coast attempting to reach Italy by boat. Through various sources of funding, the EU has since granted the Libyan Coast Guard upwards of $400 million to “support migration related issues” since the formalization of the partnership.
While the arrival of migrants by sea decreased from 2015 by nearly 40,000 in 2017, it gradually became clear that the benefits of externalization necessitated a cruelty and isolationism at odds with the platform for basic rights espoused by the EU. Not only did the EU subsidize the outsourcing of its border enforcement, but an investigation conducted by four European media organizations documented the use of Frontex surveillance drones and aircraft to identify migrant boats. In twenty separate instances Frontex surveillance craft identified migrants enroute to EU shores, then relayed the boats’ coordinates to the Libyan Coast Guard who intercepted the boat and returned the refugees to Libya. In 2022 alone, nearly 25,000 migrants were returned to Libya. Those who are forced back to Libya face imprisonment in detention camps, conditions in which are unspeakably horrific.
Libya’s current political state is tenuous as the country emerges from a violent, protracted civil war that came to conclusion in 2021. Militant groups retain power in much of the country and are notorious for running migrant detention camps along the coast. An amalgam of these groups constitute the Libyan Coast Guard. Abuses are rife and conditions are appalling within the walls of the detention camps. Guards run the detention camps as for-profit prisons, requiring fees for exit or use of a phone. An airstrike in 2019 ended in the death of 40 migrants at the Tajoura Detention Center and 5 people were killed by detention camp guards in October 2019 during an attempt to escape the compound. The devolution of political authority to armed groups promotes this type of wanton violence and exploitation. A UN statement on the condition of the detention system cites abuse “on a widespread scale … with a high level of organisation and with the encouragement of the state … suggestive of crimes against humanity.’” Detainees face extortion, physical abuse, sexual exploitation, and unprovoked killings.
While the then director of Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri, claimed the agency had no direct involvement with the Libyan Coast Guard, a classified report leaked in October of 2022 revealed the depth of the EU’s knowledge of Frontex’s cooperation and more crucially the extent of the Union’s hypocrisy. The report examines evidence for allegations of serious abuse and mismanagement that arose in 2020. Along with the documentation of a dearth of communication between the Coast Guard and Frontex agents, the investigation reached the conclusion that the level of misconduct was such that it hindered the agency’s ability to respect “fundamental rights.” This phrase refers to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, a binding agreement of certain political and social rights, much like a bill of rights. Exactly who’s fundamental rights were violated was left in the margins of the report. The refugees forced back to hellish detention camps remained casualties of the politics of delegation the EU has come to favor. Not to mention, Frontex’s active participation in the return of migrants to Libya violates international law against refoulement, or the forced return of migrants to unsafe locations.
The confidential report is evidence that the EU is aware of Frontex’s complicity in migrant pushbacks. Despite the magnitude of maltreatment and illegal action presented to the European Parliament, this February the Libyan Coast Guard was promised 5 new search-and-rescue vessels and Frontex faced no significant consequences for its malfeasance.
The relationship between Frontex and the Libyan Coast Guard is made all the more complex through Frontex’s other engagements. Similar allegations of complicity in the illegal pushback of asylum seekers in Greece have been reported. Greek border guards were documented in a leaked report using force to expel migrants on the border and denying them the opportunity to apply for asylum. A chief official in the human rights division of Frontex recommended the agency’s withdrawal from Greece on account of the abuse. The EU opted to maintain Frontex presence and support in Greece. States on the external border of the EU have unique responsibilities in border regulation. Not only do they absorb the majority of immigrants crossing the Mediterranean and the Balkans, but they are the final stop before migrants enter the Schengen area, which comprises 23 EU countries who have agreed to allow free travel across their borders. Once migrants pass through these countries along the edge of the Area, border regulation is null.
The EU’s vague directives to Frontex are a result of its own inability to conceptualize an immigration policy that is both humane and prohibitive. While each country shares responsibility for the welfare and protection of the Union, border states shoulder the brunt of the Union’s border policy and therefore find immigration to be an issue of far greater political salience than countries geographically removed from the crisis. France and Italy clashed last November over Italy’s refusal to assist aid groups in search-and-rescue missions in the Mediterranean. The French government sent 500 new guards to its own border with Italy and withdrew from an agreement to resettle 3,000 migrants who had arrived in Italy in France. This is just one in a series of conflicts over immigration. To add to the complication, it becomes difficult to accept the strain on member states’ infrastructure as justification for extreme regulatory measures given that 4 million Ukrainians were seamlessly enveloped into western Europe following Russia’s invasion.
As a result, the policy that has emerged from the collective body of these varied interests is discombobulated and contradictory. Frontex is tasked both with ensuring the “fundamental rights” of asylum seekers, but also proving itself effective in deterring migrants from reaching the shores of Greece, Italy, and Spain to begin with. At surface level, it does appear that delegation to the countries of “origin and movement” has proven an effective course of action for slowing migration flows to European borders. As opposed to the near 1 million refugees who entered Europe through the Mediterranean in 2015, only 123,000 attempted the crossing in 2021. However, the agency’s efficacy relies heavily on delegation to governmental authorities uninhibited by humanitarian standards. Try as it might to avoid a conversation about the ethics of border operations, it has become increasingly difficult for the EU to deny complicity in large-scale human rights abuse. In the vacuum of directive created by interstate squabbles and thinly veiled racism, the system that has emerged is ugly and riddled with corruption, dishonesty, and incompetence. A border authority equipped with firearms and search and rescue vehicles, that acts as both a watchdog and boasts a standing corps of thousands of officers under orders to facilitate safe border crossings, and tasked with discouraging crossings in the first place, was only ever fated to be dysfunctional.
Frontex is a mirror into which the EU finds itself staring. The irreconcilable mandates of its border agency are reflective of a union that is slowly imploding, finding it impossible to juggle the increasingly divided interests of its members. With dissatisfaction and a healthy dose of nationalism, the United Kingdom already excused itself from the turmoil over immigration. One can only wonder how much longer member states will choose to take on the stress of collaboration as the climate crisis drives more migration northward.
Eva Atkins is a first year Staff Writer at Columbia College interested in foreign policy and international relations.