2024 - Bang at Frontex - Frontex director throws out: That's behind it

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Fabrice Leggeri has resigned after serious allegations. But how did it come about? The allegations at a glance.

Author:
Saya Bausch and Brigitte Buechel

Debacle at the EU border protection agency Frontex: Today, Friday, the director, Fabrice Leggeri, resigned. The background to the 54-year-old Frenchman’s decision is primarily investigations into illegal refusals of migrants in the Mediterranean. Frontex and Leggeri have been criticized for this for months. But what specific allegations brought down the controversial Frontex boss?

Information on human rights violations

in the Aug 2019 The European Union (EU) announced an investigation into Frontex after reports of gross mistreatment of migrants at the EU’s external borders by border police officers. Several media companies based their research on hundreds of internal Frontex documents, which documented, among other things, “mistreatment of refugees”, “hunting with dogs” and “pepper spray attacks”.

Frontex was founded by the EU in 2004 and expanded to become the European Border and Coast Guard Agency after the refugee crisis in 2015.

The agency employs around 2000 men and women from the EU Member States who coordinate and support border protection at the EU’s external borders. Around 60 percent of them are employed by Frontex, the rest are made available by national border protection authorities.

Switzerland has been involved in the organization since 2011 and should participate in its expansion – that’s what the Federal Council and Parliament want. Today, Switzerland employs around six full-time positions, by 2027 there should be a maximum of 40. The financial contribution is expected to increase from 24 million today to an estimated 61 million over the same period.

Since a referendum was held against this bill, that is correct Swiss voters on May 15 about participation in the expansion of Frontex.

The European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) then carried out as part of an investigation into the allegations in December 2020 raided Leggeri’s office. According to Olaf boss, a lot of evidence should have appeared in the investigation against Leggeri, as reported by the “Spiegel”. OLAF investigators then prepared a 200-page report, which has so far been kept secret.

Representatives of member states and the EU Commission have reviewed the allegations and concluded that there is no evidence that Frontex participated in illegal refoulement.

Fabrice Leggeri presented himself to SRF June 2021 in an interview on the allegations of human rights violations. In the conversation, the Frontex director, who has been in office since 2015, emphasized that Frontex has a code of conduct and that fundamental rights must be observed. He further said: “The representatives of the member states and the EU Commission have examined the allegations and have come to the conclusion that there is no evidence that Frontex was involved in illegal refoulement.”

Failure to provide assistance: Frontex is said to be too late in passing on information about ships in distress, which is collected, for example, on patrol flights, to other ships or not following up on tips from non-governmental organizations. For example, after a shipwreck in April 2021 in the eastern Mediterranean, more than 120 people died because the rescue came too late.

Push Backs: “To push back” means to push back. To put it simply: if a coast guard pushes back a gang of people smugglers’ ships, that’s legal. But if people who want to apply for asylum are pushed back, this is illegal. Because there is a right to apply for asylum in the EU. In the eastern Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey, for example, people have been abandoned on artificial islands without being able to apply for asylum.

Pull Backs: «To pull back» means: dragging back. Frontex, the accusation goes, is secretly supplying the Libyan coast guard with information about refugee boats so that they can be towed back to Libya from the Mediterranean. In a civil war country to which, according to current European law, nobody can actually be returned.

In the same month, there was also criticism from the European Court of Auditors. Specifically, the Court of Auditors criticized clear organizational deficits at Frontex. The border protection agency is said to have not protected states effectively enough against illegal immigration and cross-border crime.