Given legal endorsement in a record fast seven months, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, based on the former Frontex agency, was officially inaugurated on Thursday 6 October at the border crossing of Kapitan Andreevo along Bulgaria’s border with Turkey.
Bulgarian Prime minister Boyko Borissov, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and the new managing director of the agency, Fabrice Leggeri, launched the agency, which will boost the surveillance of the EU’s external borders and, in some cases, intervene in a member state even if it has not necessarily called for intervention on its territory (see EUROPE 11588).
If a country were to reject intervention, the other member states would be able to decide to restore border controls along their internal borders. The idea that had been mooted of the European Commission sending the agency to intervene in a country without the country’s consent has been removed. Any physical intervention in a member state will take place in agreement with that country.
Avramopoulos said the inauguration was an important stage in managing Europe’s borders. From that day on, he said, the EU’s external border in one of its member states is the external border of all member states – both from the legal and the operational viewpoint.
Proposed in the context of the chaos of 2015 when member states reacted differently to the mass of refugees arriving in the EU via Turkey, the agency will end up having a permanent reserve of 1,500 coastguards and border guards deployable in the space of a few days. The deployment along the Bulgarian-Turkish border of 130 border guards is the first of its kind.
Leggeri said that its new mandate would enable the agency to make strength tests along external borders to detect weak links ahead of any crisis. It will also be able to provide operational support to neighbouring non-EU countries that request aid for their border and which share information with national and EU authorities about organised crime to help in legal enquiries.
The agency will become truly operational in December when its permanent reserve is set up (each member state must provide a certain number of border guards), along with the reserve of technical equipment, the Commission states. In January, teams at the agency responsible for returning migrants will become operational. The first stress tests will be carried out between January and March. By 2020, the agency will have a budget of €322 million a year. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)