While the Management Board of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) is still unable to clarify six incidents suspected of amounting to illegal incidents of so-called ‘pushback’ of migrants, it has been able to identify “deficiencies” in the incident reporting and monitoring system.
It believes that a new “culture” of incident awareness and possible misconduct at the external borders should be combined with a new incident reporting system.
And any incident involving a potential violation of rights will in future have to be directly qualified as serious and automatically forwarded to the person responsible for fundamental rights.
These are the main messages of the internal report, dated 1 March, of the Frontex working group on ‘Fundamental Rights and Legal Aspects of Operations in the Aegean Sea’ which was submitted on Friday 5 March to the members of the Management Board and seen by EUROPE.
The European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, already announced this conclusion (see EUROPE 12671/15) to the European Parliament, the day before, calling for Frontex to become a “first class” agency, capable of both “protecting our borders and protecting our values”.
The EPP group in Parliament considered that the report raised the last doubts about the agency’s role in the suspicions of pushback. On the contrary, the fact that failures are acknowledged proves that Fabrice Leggeri, the executive director of Frontex, has “lied again”, Sira Rego (The Left, Spain) reacted on Twitter.
The final report is indeed mixed, as it can neither prove any wrongdoing on the part of the Agency nor exonerate it completely
It also highlights the crucial role of the Greek Coast Guard.
The document refers, first of all, to the first preliminary report, which covered 13 incidents in the Aegean Sea, eight of which were clarified at the last Board meeting in January.
The internal report notes the difficulty of the situations encountered in this type of operation at sea, between the weather conditions and “the behaviour of the Turkish border authorities”. “Under these conditions, it is difficult to reconstruct each incident retrospectively”, it notes.
Another difficulty is the common legal interpretation of the situations on the ground. Not all the incidents detected are necessarily linked to boats carrying migrants in “distress”, and “any attempt to cross borders illegally by bypassing official crossing points (can)not automatically be considered as an asylum case, even at sea”.
Nevertheless, this right of access to asylum must be guaranteed, stresses the report, which welcomes the Commission’s work to clarify these aspects.
Role of the Greek Coast Guard and grey areas
In substance, the report provides details, about the last six questionable cases, without being able to come to a firm conclusion.
For example, on 18 April 2020, a Frontex plane observed an inflatable boat in Greek waters, empty and being towed by a Greek coast guard ship to Turkish waters. The Greek ship had 20 to 30 people on board who were then put back into the inflatable boat at the Greek-Turkish border before the Greek forces moved away. According to Athens, Turkey then took responsibility for the incident.
In this case, the EU agency drew up a ‘serious’ incident report which it closed on 30 April. According to it, the available data show that the inflatable boat had been spotted by a Frontex aircraft in Greek territorial waters and, at the time of detection, a Turkish vessel was indeed in the vicinity. But the agency had to rely on the Greek explanations, as Frontex was unable to confirm the presence of the Turkish ship with its own images.
Another case: in July 2020, a Danish helicopter intervened for Frontex and spotted an inflatable boat in Greek waters. This occasion provoked a disagreement between the Danes and the Greeks. The Danish team reported that the Greek coast guard passed very close by the boat at high speed, casting doubt on the safety of the migrants on board. Frontex has not been able to establish the accuracy of the facts or the role played by the Turks.
On 8 August 2020, Frontex circulated erroneous information on the number of migrants concerned, 60 in total against the 30 initially counted. The boat in question turned back on its own initiative to reach Turkish waters after the coast guard explained that it was unable to carry out checks on the boat and to take information on migrants described as uncooperative because they wanted to evade border controls. Frontex was also unable to clarify what happened, and the agency has not finalised its report. It is expected to submit it soon.
Frontex is also suspected of having failed to report a potentially serious incident involving a Swedish team at the end of October 2020. Having entrusted the case of a migrant boat detected in Greek waters to the Greek coastguard, a Swedish team then reportedly detected a distress signal as two Greek boats were advancing towards Turkish waters. The Swedish team requested a serious incident report. But, again, the Greek coast guard explained that this was not a case of rescue at sea and that these migrants had also not been cooperative. The Swedish team did not agree. Here again, the investigations will continue.
Of the six cases, it has “not been possible to completely resolve the incidents beyond all doubt”, the report points out. The report was also not able to substantiate the fact that “the Turkish authorities have not taken responsibility for the safe return of the migrants, or that the migrants did not reach the Greek coasts safely”.
There is, in any case, no indication of injuries, missing persons or deceased in the context of the incidents noted.
Link to the report: http://bit.ly/3rf5FDP (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)