All immigration irregularities and the truth about Frontex

21 February 20231 year ago babelfish

What a German investigation says about Frontex's irregularities. The intervention of Alessandra Servidori

To form an opinion on the immigration issue, and to understand truth or falsehood, it is necessary to read the international press. The German freedom of information society Frag Den Staat, together with other media organisations, has published a confidential report by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) on Frontex, the EU's Border and Coast Guard agency (EBCG ), which confirms the credibility of many of the serious allegations of cover-ups of human rights violations in EU Member States by the agency and its staff.

OLAF'S INVESTIGATION ON FRONTEX

This report is the result of an investigation by OLAF, launched in October 2020, when it received information about possible irregularities affecting the EBCG agency.

Some of these allegations, in particular those referring to Frontex's involvement in illegal push-backs of migrants, had already been denounced in March 2021. The European Parliament set up a working group on Frontex control of the LIBE Civil Liberties Committee, justice and home affairs, with a mandate to continuously monitor all aspects of the functioning of Frontex, including the strengthening of the role and resources for integrated border management. But a negative opinion from Frontex did not come from here. Instead, the European Court of Auditors published a report on the effectiveness of Frontex's support to the management of external borders, highlighting various issues affecting the ability of the Agency Established in 2004 to fulfill its new mandate, as over the years the Agency progressively endorsed a more operational role and moved away from a purely coordination role, mainly due to the 2014-2016 migration crisis, which accelerated the transformation of Frontex into a law enforcement type agency, two years after the entry into force of the 2016 regulation which gave Frontex a strengthened mandate and accountability.

HOW FRONTEX HAS CHANGED

The main novelty was the establishment of the European Border and Coast Guard standing corps, the first uniformed law enforcement service in the EU, with executive powers to support Member States on the ground in their efforts to protect the external borders of the EU. This structure required an unprecedented amount of staff, providing up to 10,000 operational staff at the Agency's disposal by 2027. Frontex's budget also increased rapidly, from EUR 333 million in 2019 to EUR 364 million in 2020 and from EUR 535 million in 2021 to EUR 754 million in 2022.

OLAF has launched an internal investigation focusing on potential misconduct and/or irregularities related to the alleged potential involvement and/or cover-up of illegal push-backs and to the internal functioning and management of Frontex; both committed by individuals within the agency, whose names were redacted in the leaked report. The lack of loyalty of the persons under investigation towards the Union has been demonstrated.

In particular, these people partially based their decisions on personal biases and their low esteem for European Commission officials, considering the latter too focused on fundamental rights issues and lacking any understanding of operational border management issues external.

OLAF's report classified the deficiencies of the persons under investigation into three types, failure to comply with procedures and processes, failure to fulfill their duty of loyalty and failure to fulfill their management responsibilities. It also revealed that suspects disclosed sensitive or sensitive information, without any legitimate justification, and presented an incorrect or biased description of the facts on how the Agency had dealt with fundamental rights issues when informing the EU institutions (European Parliament and European Commission).

OLAF'S CONCLUSIONS

OLAF concluded that the repeated wrongdoings of the persons under investigation violate the Frontex Code of Conduct, the EU Staff Regulations and the EBCG Regulations (Regulation (EU) 2016/1624 and Regulation (EU) 2019/1896), in particular in relation to the protection of fundamental rights in the performance of the Agency's tasks.

OLAF's report demonstrates the Agency's involvement in illegal push-backs and the failure of Frontex staff to fulfill the role and tasks related to the Fundamental Rights Office. Frontex was accused of failing to address and follow up on allegations of fundamental rights violations in a timely and effective manner and criticized other important issues, notably the delay in recruiting fundamental rights monitors, the lack of cooperation from the Executive Director in ensuring compliance with several provisions of the Frontex Regulation, and the passive role of the Agency's Management Board in addressing the serious risk of fundamental rights violations.

As EU migration policy has become increasingly focused on the security of the external borders, the extension of the mandate of the European Border Coast Guard Agency makes it more urgent than ever to address the issues addressed in OLAF's report, in order to ensure respect for the fundamental rights of migrants at the EU's external borders. Through the forthcoming evaluation, the European Commission must now take into account all the findings of these investigations and make sure that the best-funded EU agency does not violate European and international law. Above all, it will be better to change its vertices.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/frontex-immigrazione-irregolarita/ on Tue, 21 Feb 2023 08:28:09 +0000.