The Mounting Pressure on The EU Border Control Agency Frontex

The NGOs 'front-lex' and the 'Legal Center Lesvos' sue Frontex over alleged "pushbacks" in the Aegean Sea. "Pushbacks" are situations in which a Frontex ship forces a migrant-filled dinghy into the Turkish waters where they came from. The agency denies the allegations and they must because according to EU "law" (treaties) every stranger is free to start expensive long-winding legal asylum cases that must be decided case by case. Stopping strangers from coming into EU member states is thus almost a crime in and of itself.

The legal case stands on a shaky ground, though. The main argument is that "pushbacks" violated the principle of non-refoulement which is the prohibition to deport somebody to a place where he is persecuted. Turkey is not such a place.

Frontex is by design a weak agency and the reason for that is the nature of the EU itself. The European Union does not admit to be a nation because evil "nationalism" is the scare the Eurocrats need to dissolve the old nations on EU territory. Therefore Frontex can only be a supplementary border control agency aiding national border security efforts. And despite its limits as information sharing and lend-and-borrow hub, frontex officers are obsessively lectured on the dangers of breaking human rights all the time. Additionally, the agency has the mandate to hire forty 'fundamental rights officers.' An obligation they have been smart enough to ignore.

The second allegation of the legal note is the obfuscation claim. If any meaningful engagement is quasi illegal, then reporting on it by Frontex members of staff is frowned upon. Hence, since everything is a human right or a violation thereof, a reporting system is baked into the structure of the organisation. The distrust against the light-weight, low-power agency was met with the promise of an almost religious repentance mechanism. This promise was probably also not kept.

OLAF, the anti-corruption agency of the European Union, has searched the office of Frontex Director Fabrice Leggeri and his assistant Thibauld de la Haye Jousselin already on 2020, December 7. Emily O'Reilly, EU ombudswoman for everything, is investigating the claim of a lack of transparency.

The logic of 'front-lex' and 'Legal Center Lesvos' is that border control should vanish if it does not live up to the aloof standards of the EU treaties and directives. But not law enforcement must be abandoned to accommodate stupid paperwork, it is the paperwork that needs fixing. Unfortunately, it means addressing our infantility culture that is unable to weigh the risk of destabilisation of the Western world and the subsequent drop of life expectancy for mankind across the world against the occasional tragedy of the sinking dinghy on the Sea.

more in my video

sources:
https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/news-document/en/134739
https://www.politico.eu/article/olaf-opens-investigation-on-frontex-for-allegations-of-pushbacksand-
misconduct/
https://www.dw.com/en/frontex-protecting-the-eus-external-borders-at-any-cost/a-56551641
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?
uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2016.251.01.0001.01.ENG&toc=OJ:L:2016:251:FULL
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32008L0115&from=EN
https://frontex.europa.eu/accountability/fundamental-rights/fundamental-rights-at-frontex/
https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/261205/olaf-raided-eu-border-chiefs-office-over-migrantpushback-
claims/
https://frontex.europa.eu/media-centre/news/news-release/frontex-launches-internal-inquiry-intoincidents-
recently-reported-by-media-ZtuEBP
https://people.com/human-interest/american-missionary-allegedly-killed-endangered-tribe-remoteindian-
island/
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20210222IPR98303/frontex-meps-toinvestigate-
alleged-violations-of-fundamental-rights
https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/24/meps-to-personally-investigate-frontex-amid-pushbackallegations
(thumbnail)https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Migrant_hunting_EU_agency_-_Shut_Down_FRONTEX_Warsaw_2008.jpg/330px-Migrant_hunting_EU_agency_-_Shut_Down_FRONTEX_Warsaw_2008.jpg