by Francesca Spinelli, journalist and translator
On January 28, 2026, graffiti appeared on a wall in the Marolles neighborhood, in central Brussels: “Abolish ICE, burn down Frontex.” Three weeks had passed since the murder of Renee Nicole Good in the United States, and in Belgium and elsewhere, more and more people were comparing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, known as Frontex.

The two agencies share a similar history. Created a year apart (ICE in 2003, Frontex in 2004), in a context marked by the September 11, 2001, attacks, they were presented as the necessary response to a supposed security threat: immigration. With ever-increasing funding and authority, both agencies have as their primary objective the reduction of so-called irregular immigration, and both are accused of violating fundamental rights.
Frontex could have done without this negative publicity, especially in the year its mandate is set to be reviewed.
The European Commission launched the reform process in the summer of 2025, initiating a public consultation and beginning to gather input from member states. In the third quarter of 2026, it is expected to submit the text of the reform proposal to the European Parliament and the Council, which will propose their own amendments in order to reach, through interinstitutional negotiations known as the trilogue, an agreement on the final version of the text.
Some elements of the reform proposal have already been leaked. The shared goal is to strengthen the agency’s mandate, but not everyone interprets this in the same way. For European countries, its evolution represents both an opportunity and a threat. 
The era when Frontex played a purely coordinating role is now long gone. Created after the Union’s eastward expansion in 2004 to help individual countries monitor the external borders of the Schengen area, the agency has for years also provided support in other sectors (deportations, data collection on so-called migration flows, training). Starting in 2016, its operational autonomy was strengthened, among others with the ability to purchase technical equipment, then, in 2019, with the creation of a permanent corps of armed agents, some of whom were hired directly.

A Controversial Proposal

For member states, this operational role must be kept under control. Silvia Carta, advocacy director at Picum (Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants), speaks of “backlash against anything perceived as an encroachment on national competences.”
In February 2026, ten countries (Croatia, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, and Hungary) publicly backed a reform to make the agency more effective, but without expanding its mandate. Frontex’s potential coordinating role in European drone defense plans is a contentious issue, notes Matthias Monroy, author of the blog “Dissecting Security Architectures” 
“Frontex has already conducted pilot projects,” explains Monroy. “They organized an Industry Day dedicated to drones and a defense competition. But there is still no legal framework allowing the agency to operate in this field, and it is a subject of debate among member states.”
Similarly, Monroy points out, “the proposal to allow Frontex to operate at borders between states within the Schengen area will likely be rejected by most states, because it is a matter of national sovereignty.”
As Silvia Carta notes, EU member states are, however, willing to grant the agency greater autonomy outside their own territories, because having “an operational arm in third countries (i.e., outside the European Union) is convenient.”
A document from the then-Danish presidency of the Council of the European Union, published in December 2025 by Statewatch, states that “member states are in favor of a greater role for Frontex in cooperation with third countries,” possibly through “more flexible forms of international agreements.”
Frontex could also play a central role in the forced transfers of people to third countries and in the management of return centers operating outside the territory of the European Union. These two measures are at the heart of the new return regulation. In March the European Parliament approved a version of the regulation dictated by the far right with the approval of the majority group, the European People’s Party (EPP).

Against Rights

This provides a glimpse on how the debate on Frontex reform might unfold, especially since one of the agency’s leading experts and supporters is a French MEP, Fabrice Leggeri, of the far-right Rassemblement National party. Between 2000 and 2003, while working at the Commission, Leggeri helped establish the agency. From 2015 to 2022, he served as its director, before falling from grace; now, having joined the European Parliament in 2024 with the Patriots for Europe group, he can openly express positions that he was required to tone down in the past while serving as an EU official. 
Ilaria Salis, an Italian MEP from the Left group in the European Parliament, faced Leggeri during the review of the proposed regulation on safe third countries, for which they were both shadow rapporteurs (the regulation was adopted on February 23, 2026).
“Leggeri insisted that the text include the possibility of deporting unaccompanied minors to third countries where they had never set foot, if deemed a threat to national security,” says Salis. “The EPP agreed; it was the Council that opposed it (only on this point; everything else passed). By now, figures like Leggeri are no longer marginalized; their demands are taken up by a majority ranging from the center-right to the right.”
To understand what Leggeri could propose during the debate on the Frontex reform, one can read an interview with him published in July 2025 on the Patriots for Europe foundation’s website:  “Frontex has become an agency held hostage by a ‘droits-de-l’hommiste’ ideology that paralyzes its operations (’droits-de-l’hommisme’ is a neologism favored by the French right, used to discredit those who defend human rights, ed.). Instead of defending Europe’s borders, the agency is hindered in its operations by officials tasked with monitoring compliance with fundamental rights.”
Those who work on these rights—NGOs, lawyers, activists—have the opposite view: the mechanisms introduced over the years to ensure that Frontex respects fundamental rights are ineffective, as Picum has reported to the Commission. For its part, the agency attempts to promote a positive image in its communication and recruitment campaigns, an image that serves to legitimize its ambition: to make itself indispensable to member states while maintaining its autonomy.

Not Just at the Borders

As Monroy points out, “the functioning of European agencies stipulates that those who lead them cannot receive orders from higher authorities. All operational decisions are made by the director. In this regard, Frontex is no different.” Except on one point: “It was never intended for the Union to establish its own police force, yet that is what Frontex has become,” observes Monroy. “The European Union, in theory, should not create structures that already exist in its member states, but rather structures capable of supporting and strengthening them.” And this explains the resistance of some governments to the agency’s expansion. The defense industry, however, is delighted, seeing Frontex—with its ever-growing budget—as a cash cow. All the more so, Salis warns, as the agency “will be increasingly involved in the Union’s defense and security strategies, now that migration is considered part of so-called hybrid attacks.”
One might have expected the role of the Union’s primary police force to fall to another agency: Europol, whose staff, however, are unarmed (“Our weapon is intelligence,” reads its website). Frontex is armed and proud of it. It has significant resources and is backed by the far right, which would like to see it play an even more decisive role in the fight against irregular immigration. The upcoming reform will undoubtedly grant it more powers, but it remains to be seen how much leeway European states will be willing to give it.
The case of Belgium could raise concerns. In 2025, a law came into effect allowing Frontex agents to operate on Belgian territory under the supervision of police forces. The law theoretically applies only “to the external border zones of the Schengen Area in Belgium”: airports, ports, and the Midi railway station, from which trains depart for the United Kingdom.
But some fear it paves the way for a more widespread presence of the agency on the territory, especially now that, with the new return regulation, measures to identify people residing irregularly within the Union will be strengthened. As Silvia Carta points out, the impact of migration policies “is not limited to the borders but is also felt in cities, on the streets, in workplaces, and in schools. The violence at the borders extends all the way here.” And wherever there are borders, Frontex’s presence will grow.
Originally published in Italian here: 
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