In advance of the upcoming action day, we talked to the Civil Fleet podcast about Frontex’s wrongdoings on the African continent, the problems with border externalisation, and why the EU border regime needs to be abolished. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or directly here.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
EU planning new anti-migration deals with Egypt and Tunisia, unrepentant in support for Libya
19 November 2023 – The European Commission wants to agree “new anti-smuggling operational partnerships” with Tunisia and Egypt before the end of the year, despite longstanding reports of abuse against migrants and refugees in Egypt and recent racist violence endorsed by the Tunisian state. Material and financial support is already being stepped up to the …
AI in border control and surveillance: Current and future implications
The European architecture for border surveillance has been continuously expanding in an attempt to detect, deter and repel refugees and migrants. For those who manage to enter, they are biometrically registered and screened against large-scale databases, raising serious concerns on privacy violations, data protection breaches and questions of proportionality. Recently Euromed Rights launched a new …
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Frontex in Africa
In 2006 Frontex deployed Hera, its first joint operation outside Europe, in an attempt to intercept migrants travelling by boat from Senegal to the Spanish Canary Islands. This made an already dangerous journey even more difficult and included the involvement in illegal pushbacks. Since then, the EU has intensified its efforts of turning African countries …
[EN/DE/IT/FR/AR] Frontex out of Africa! Join our International Action Day on 18/12/2023
[German/Italian/French/Arabic below] English Dear Abolish Frontex supporters, In 2006 Frontex deployed Hera, its first joint operation outside Europe, in an attempt to stop migration from Senegal to the Spanish Canary Islands. This made an already dangerous journey even more difficult and included the involvement in illegal pushbacks. Since then, the EU has doubled down on …
Solidarity with uprising in Medved’ov migrant detention center (Slovakia)
[Taken from the Instagram of the Frachcollective] 20 October 2023 – Yesterday, 45 detained people on the move entered into a hunger strike protesting their detention at the Slovakian-Hungarian border town Medved’ov. Mostly Kurdish people from Iraq and Turkey, as well as people from Afghanistan, are detained since weeks, some for months, without any information …
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Frontex: deportations at record high in first half of 2023
The European Union’s border agency, Frontex, facilitated the deportation of nearly 18,000 individuals from EU territory during the first half of 2023, marking an unprecedented peak. This surge in removals, executed through both scheduled flights and “voluntary” return procedures, demonstrates a 60% upswing in deportations compared to the corresponding period in 2022. Read the full …
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New Frontex contracts for aerial surveillance flights
2 October 2023 – On 5 September Frontex awarded new framework contracts for manned aerial surveillance flights on land and coastline to the companies CAE Aviation (Luxembourg) and European SAO (Malta). Under this contract they will fly scheduled and unscheduled flights from a base airport on request, “to report objects and events of interest to …
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Lampedusa: no to Frontex, no to migration cooperation with Tunisia
18 September 2023 – Abolish Frontex, a grassroots network of over 130 organisations and groups, strongly condemns the reaction of the European Union to the current migration situation on Lampedusa. The 10–Point Plan presented by European Commission president von der Leyen during her visit to the island on Sunday 17 September, at the invitation of Italy’s far right government, …
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Shielding Frontex – On the EU General Court’s “WS and others v Frontex”
While a number of complaints have been lodged against Frontex before the EU’s courts in different procedures (e.g., annulment, transparency, failure to act), the action for damages in casu, was the first of its kind concerning human rights responsibility of Frontex and had all the ingredients to prompt the General Court to finally clarify a …
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