The Executive Director of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), Fabrice Leggeri, pledged on Thursday 4 March to provide complete transparency on the activities of his Agency, to remedy shortcomings as quickly as possible, such as incident notification systems or the hiring of staff dedicated to fundamental rights and to communicate as often as possible with elected representatives.
While appearing before the members of the European Parliament’s Scrutiny Group on the Agency, he also reassured them that, up to now, no action of so-called pushback or violation of migrants’ rights could be “substantiated” and this is what the “report will say”, which will be presented by the Agency’s Management Board on 5 March.
The European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, was also invited to speak. She continued to express concern about these allegations “coming from reliable sources”. She again expressed her “regret” that the various internal reports from Frontex arrived too late, both on the fundamental rights agents who could not be hired on time - three Vice-Executive Directors, 40 agents and a fundamental rights officer were due to be in place by December 2020 - and on the accusations of pushback.
“I regret these delays” which damage “the reputation and trust” of the Agency, she added.
“Frontex must be a first-class Agency, protecting our borders and safeguarding our values”, the Commissioner argued, calling for “a sense of trust”, “insisting on transparency” and “learning immediately” from failures.
The report presented to the Management Board on Friday, which according to leaks would not allow proof of pushback actions, should highlight the failures of the incident reporting system and call for a new awareness of possible misconduct, Mrs Johansson said.
For an hour and a quarter, the elected representatives questioned the Executive Director both on these hirings, which he announced would be effective in April, with 15 first officers recruited, and on the allegations of pushback, particularly in the Aegean Sea.
While he has assured that no agents operating under Frontex have, to date, been involved in pushback, he raised the complexity of Regulation 656/2014 on the rules for the surveillance of external maritime borders and its provisions on the interception of migrants at sea; a complexity or legal vagueness that may raise doubts in public opinion, the Frenchman seemed to suggest.
Fabrice Leggeri thus explained that the decision was taken with Athens to make interceptions in the Aegean Sea under this Regulation, which allows a boat to be refused entry into European territorial waters or to be invited to leave them. There should be more clarity on these operational aspects, he said.
For Libya, the situation is different and Frontex only carries out rescues at sea, added the Director of Frontex, stating that the Agency was never linked to the Libyan coastguard, but that it supported the activities of EUBAM or Sophia (now Irini).
On these legal aspects, the Commissioner indicated that her services are working on a clarification of some of the legal aspects: the obligation to protect the borders against illegal entry, but also the obligation to let a person submit an asylum application, if they indicate they wish to, allowing them a real process.
Apply pressure
Did Fabrice Leggeri convince the members of the Scrutiny Group? “It was a first hearing”, observed Spain’s Javier Moreno Sánchez, who took note of the commitments of the Director of Frontex, but asked to “see”.
For the S&D representative, more channels of communication with the Agency are needed to avoid learning about all incidents “through the press”.
However, he finds it difficult to understand why these fundamental rights staff take so long to be hired. “It really needs this political pressure to move things forward”, he said, because “if not, nothing happens”.
The next meeting of the Scrutiny Group will take place before Easter. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)