7 April 2025 – The EU border agency wants to close a “gap” between aircraft and satellites with high-flying platforms. Spain is already using the technology against migration over the Atlantic. A test flight over the Mediterranean will take place this summer.
Frontex wants to fly so-called High Altitude Pseudo Satellites (HAPS) in the stratosphere in future, thereby closing an alleged gap between aircraft and satellites that are already used for border surveillance. In 2022, the EU had already launched a three-year research project for a total of €7 million to integrate the systems. This also looked at their suitability for border surveillance.
With the end of the project approaching, Frontex organised a so-called HAPS Industry Day at its headquarters in Warsaw on last Thursday. There, manufacturers were able to promote the possible use of their pseudo-satellites for migration defence and demonstrate their capabilities.
Read the complete article on the website of Matthias Monroy.
[Spanish/French/Italian below]
Everywhere, the same logics of oppression are strangling us. From Belgrade to Athens, from Rome to Brussels, governments stifle the most precarious, destroy solidarity and oppress those who refuse to bow down. They impose a world where survival is a daily struggle, where borders kill and where people are criminalized.
On 10 April 2024, the EU Parliament adopted the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum despite the fierce opposition of many of us. The Pact is a tool to organize and legitimize a cruel system of tracking, filtering, exploiting, detaining and deporting people. It intends to isolate, invisibilize, precaritize, and criminalize people arriving to Europe; it is de facto abolishing the right to move and to asylum in Europe.
This Pact kills solidarity. This Pact kills rights. This Pact kills people.
A lot has been written about the denial of rescue, negligence and life-threatening actions of the Hellenic Coast Guard that constituted the state crime of Pylos. More than 600 people were drowned due to the direct actions and omissions of the responsible agents of the Greek state. The shipwreck of Pylos is one of the deadliest in the contemporary history of the Mediterranean, and the deadliest incident, which was directly caused by the actions of a state actor, since WW2 in Europe in time of “peace”. While the Greek state’s agencies that are responsible must be held accountable, European authorities and in particular Frontex’s involvement in this state crime must also be called into question and held responsible for their actions and omissions.
Read the full statement here.
Full call in English – Francais – Español – Italiano – عربي
27 January 2025 [message from Comméraction] – On February 6, 2024, a major transnational mobilization marked the 10th anniversary of CommemorAction. On February 6, 2025, we aim to further amplify this mobilization in support of the families of those who have died or disappeared during migration.
On February 6, 2014, more than 200 people departed from the Moroccan coast and attempted to swim to the Tarajal beach in the Spanish colonial enclave of Ceuta. To prevent them from reaching “Spanish soil,” the Guardia Civil used riot control equipment, while Moroccan soldiers stood by, allowing people to drown in front of them. Fifteen bodies were recovered on the Spanish side, dozens more went missing, and the survivors were pushed back, some of whom perished on the Moroccan side.
For more than thirty years, the direct or indirect violence of border regimes has continued to cause death and disappearances along migratory routes. Shipwrecks occur in succession, often marked by the lack of assistance and, at times, the active involvement of coast guards and Frontex. The number of people disappearing without a trace, either at sea or in the desert, keeps increasing. Meanwhile, efforts by authorities to search for and identify bodies are often hasty and fail to involve the families affected by these losses.
For more than thirty years, families and loved ones, associations, and all those fighting for equal mobility rights have continuously demanded truth and justice for these victims. They have highlighted the responsibilities of racist migration policies, worked to expose these responsibilities, and supported families and loved ones in their painful search for the missing and identification of victims.
Starting in 2024, the Commemor-Action network launched a website to compile mobilizations held annually on February 6. The platform also aims to highlight the collective, coordinated, and shared dimensions of these actions. These mobilizations reflect the unwavering commitment of associations, collectives, and, above all, families seeking truth and justice.
We call on all social and political organizations, secular and religious groups, victim families’ collectives, and citizens worldwide to organize protest and awareness-raising actions on February 6, 2025. We invite you to use the logo above, alongside your own logos, as a symbol of the connection between all the different initiatives. Please share information about your initiatives with us (preferably before February 6) to help make the collective mobilization visible through the Commemor-Action website.
To endorse this call, you can write to: Email: globalcommemoraction[a]gmail.com
Facebook Group – Facebook Page – Past Commemor-Action Page
Migrate to live, not to die! They are people, not numbers!
Freedom of movement for all!
13 January 2025 – In August 2023, Bulgarian and European Commission (EC) officials met to discuss a “targeted assisted voluntary return project” as part of the Commission’s Pilot Project in the country.
The “Pilot Project for fast asylum and returns procedures” had been launched in Bulgaria and Romania a few months prior to create “ad hoc solutions” to some of the issues preventing the two countries from finalising their accession to the Schengen area.
Some of these “solutions” included the continuation of pushbacks against people on the move. Balkan Insight revealed the widespread – if not systematic – pushbacks at the EU’s eastern and south-eastern borders in February last year.
Another “solution” was the implementation of “an updated AVR [Assisted Voluntary Return] programme in Bulgaria, with the deployment of additional Frontex return counsellors and technical assistance from the Commission,” according to a document obtained by Statewatch through an access to documents request.
Read the whole article by Hope Barker and Anas Ambri on the website of Statewatch
20 years of Frontex are 20 years too many! The action week around Frontex’s 20th anniversary calling for the abolition of the agency saw actions in at least 10 cities in 7 countries across Europe.
Click on the images to enlarge them and find all photos for download here.
Continue reading “Impressions from the October 2024 Action Week”
26 October 2024
Dear Ms. Ursula von der Leyen,
October 26 will mark the 20th anniversary of Frontex, the EU’s border agency. It should also mark the last.
Frontex is a deadly failed experiment. It has made countless people less safe, eroded the values and ideals the European Union claims to hold dear, and provided a backdoor into government for corporate power.
Continue reading “Open Letter: Frontex’s 20th anniversary should also be its last”
Fortress Europe is intercontinental. The EU uses its economic power to exploit impoverished countries, forcing people onto deadly and dangerous journeys. It also pays third countries to intercept and detain people on the move before they can reach EU borders, leading to massive human rights violations. Private companies of the border-industrial-complex are profiting from these actions, often through Frontex as a driving force of border militarisation. While the EU’s border regime is making it harder and harder for people to move, money can cross international borders without any issues.
Below you find blueprints for stamps that call out the racist double standards of the EU and their usage of money as a form of power. Use a 3D-printer and spread the word!
Continue reading “New resource: 3D-printed stamps against Fortress Europe”
Il y a 20 ans, une nouvelle agence de l’Union européenne était créée dans le but de coordonner le travail des garde-côtes et garde-frontières des États membres. En deux décennies, Frontex a réussi l’exploit de devenir l’agence disposant du plus gros budget (859 millions d’euros en 2024) et la seule institution de l’UE nantie de personnel armé. Son mandat ne cesse de s’étendre sur le plan géographique et juridique, hors de tout réel contrôle démocratique.
