[by Lena Karamanidou, researcher] 13 December 2021 – Since 2011, Frontex has established several accountability mechanisms to address the widespread concerns about the Agency’s human rights record. The collective function of the six accountability mechanisms – the Serious Incident Reporting system, Forced Return Monitors, the Fundamental Rights Officer (FRO) and the Consultative Forum, all established in 2011, the Individual Complaints mechanism introduced in 2016, and Fundamental Rights Monitors (FRMs) in 2019 – is to monitor and report fundamental rights violations in the context of Frontex’s operations and strengthen compliance with fundamental rights obligations. In addition to these internal administrative mechanisms Frontex is accountable to other institutions, such as the European Parliament, the Council and courts.

The effectiveness of the Frontex human rights record and accountability regime has always been questioned, but in the course of the investigations into Frontex that have taken place in the last year, it has become clearer than ever that the accountability regime acts as a fig leaf. Rather than documenting violations and violence at the borders of the European Union, it conceals them. Rather than preventing violence – assuming this is possible since the institution of the border is inherently violent and racist – they have been used to exonerate Frontex from any wrongdoing and to legitimatize the violence and violations perpetrated by the EU and its member states. Continue reading “A Fig Leaf: the Frontex accountability regime”

[by Stop the War on Migrants & Stop Wapenhandel] 7 December 2021 – On 13 November 2019, the European Parliament voted in favor of a major expansion of Frontex, the EU’s border guard agency. This expansion is part of a process started during the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 and is, as Frontex itself likes to proclaim, unprecedented in the history of the EU. It’s unprecedented because previously Frontex had a largely coordinating and intermediary function within the European border security system. Frontex essentially ‘borrowed’ its personnel and equipment from the EU member states, a kind of secondment of national border guards. However, this was seen as inefficient and inadequate by both the European Commission and Frontex itself, mainly because EU Member States didn’t commit as much as expected and then subsequently also failed to deliver. This led to the birth of the new mandate. Frontex had to become more independent and “Regulation (EU) 2019/1986” would achieve that. Continue reading “Frontex builds its own armed border police force”

22 November 2021 – Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, has increasingly close relations with the European military and security industry. Since it started operating in 2005 it has primarily functioned as an intermediary between industry and border authorities of EU member states. With its expanded budget for the next seven years (2021-2027) it is bound to become a big
buyer of its own.

Read the fact sheet ‘Frontex and the military and security industry‘ [pdf] by the Abolish Frontex Research Group.

On 18 December – International Migrants Day – , take action to #AbolishFrontex and end the EU border regime.

ENGLISH | DEUTSCH | ITALIANO | FRANÇAIS

Over 44.764 people have died trying to reach Fortress Europe. In Tripoli, nearly 3000 refugees are protesting outside the UNHCR headquarters following the mass detention of 5000 people and the death of six people in early October. Thousands of people are currently stuck and facing violence at the Polish-Belarus border and are being pushed back into Belarus. Journalists and human rights workers are being kept out of the border are which has become a militarised zone under a state of emergency.

The response from EU member states and its institutions?

Continue reading “Take action on 18 December – International Migrants Day – to Abolish Frontex!”

Continue reading “Open letter to Polytechnic University of Turin about working for Frontex”

Re-posted from the Alarm Phone – Watch the med blog

Since August 2021, Alarm Phone has received numerous distress calls from the border between Belarus, Poland and Lithuania. In the media and public discourse, people on the move are portrayed either as a military threat or as absolute victims.

However, when we are in contact with these people, we witness something different:

We see human beings who have decided to move for a variety of reasons. We see people trying to reach their loved ones, and groups of friends trying to reach a safer place together. We also see the distress and concern of their relatives and friends who already made it to Germany or other EU countries on the other side of the border. These relatives and friends try to help those on the move but this can be dangerous as such support is increasingly criminalized. We also see acts of solidarity by activists from Poland, Lithuania, and other countries who stand alongside those in distress. Continue reading “Stop the war on migration along the EU-Belarus border! Freedom of movement for all!”

Continue reading “Glock will provide firearms to Frontex border police force”

[by Transnational Migrants Coordination] 5 November 2021 – We, migrant men and women of the Transnational Migrants’ Coordination (TMC) express our support for the struggle of refugees in Libya. During the past month, almost 3.000 refugees in Tripoli – tired of torture, rape, arbitrary detention, exploitation, threats, and violence – have been self-organising and have set up a permanent assembly called ‘Refugees in Libya‘ in front of the UNHCR headquarters, with a coordination group to take decisions and make their voices heard with institutions and the media. At least 300 of them are women, and some of them are pregnant. They are the migrants who escaped what the Libyan Ministry of Interior called “operation security”, an indiscriminate round-up which had taken place on October 2^nd in Gargadesh, one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Tripoli, and which had led to the detention of more than 5.000 people, accused of violating immigration law, drug trafficking and prostitution, in the Ghout al-Shaal centre. During the raid, six people were killed and others disappeared.

Read further on the website of Transnational Migrants Coordination (also in French and Italian)

[Blog by the LasciateCIEntrare campaign] 5 November 2021 – In July 2021, Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard agency, and the Italian consortium composed by  Associazione Ithaca, DIST (Dipartimento Interateneo di Scienze, Progetto e Politiche del Territorio) of Turin Polytechnic and Ithaca Srl (a company controlled by the homonymous association) signed “an important cartographic production contract” to support European border surveillance activities. The contract lasts for 24 months, with a total budget of four million euros, and may be renewed for a maximum of a further 24 months. 

The non-profit ITHACA association based in Turin is part of the consortium. It was born as an applied research centre with the goal of cooperating with the World Food Programme (WFP) – the UN’s branch to provide food assistance – to distribute products and services linked to IT, “to improve the capacity of the international humanitarian community regarding early warning, swift impact assessment and other areas connected to risk management”. 

Read further on the website of LasciateCIEntrare

[by Michele Lancione, Full Professor of Political-Economic Geography, DIST, Turin – Italian version published in Altreconomia]

24 October 2021 – I am an academic from the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST) of the Politecnico and the University of Turin. I am writing this text to publicly dissociate myself from the agreement signed between my Department, the Politecnico di Torino, Ithaca Srl and Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency.

As an article published by the magazine Antreconomia points out, the agreement, which involves the production of cartography at my Department’s laboratories on behalf of Frontex, was announced on July 14, 2021, by press release. In the communiqué, it is stated that DIST and Ithaca will be involved in the “production of digital cartography, infographic maps and map books useful for the Agency’s work“. On an intellectual and human level, I am not represented by the position of the institution I work for, which has chosen to define the agreement with Frontex as a project that “fits perfectly into the strategic objective of the Department”. The issue, however, is not only personal but political. Continue reading “My University works with Frontex: not in my name”