Frontex

Frontex (from French: Frontières extérieures for "external borders", legally: European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union) is the European Union agency for external border security. It is responsible for co-ordinating the activities of the national border guards in ensuring the security of the EU's borders with non-member states. Frontex is headquartered in Warsaw, Poland. The main role of Frontex is to protect EU external borders from illegal immigration and people trafficking as well as infiltration into Europe by possible terrorist elements.

Frontex was established by Council Regulation (EC) 2007/2004. The agency started to operate on 3 October 2005 and was the first EU agency to be based in one of the new EU member states from 2004.

Responsibilities
Frontex' mission is to help EU Member States implement EU rules on external border controls and to coordinate operational cooperation between Member States in the field of external border management. While it remains the task of each member state to control its own borders, the Agency is vested with the function to ensure that they all do so with the same high standard of efficiency. The agency's main tasks according to the Council Regulation are:


 * The Coordination of operational cooperation between Member States regarding the management of external borders.
 * Assisting Member States in the training of national border guards.
 * Carrying out risk analyses.
 * Following up the development of research relevant for the control and surveillance of external borders.
 * Assisting Member States in circumstances requiring increased technical and operational assistance at external borders.
 * Providing Member States with the necessary support in organising joint return operations.

Staff and resources
The institution is centrally and hierarchically organised with a Management Board, consisting of one person of each Member State as well as two members of the Commission. The Member States representatives are operational heads of national security services concerned with border guard management. Frontex also has representatives from and works closely with Europol and Interpol. The Management Board is the leading component of the agency, controlling the personal, financial, and organisational structure, as well as initiating operative tasks in annual work programmes. Additionally, the Board appoints the Executive Director. The first and incumbent Director is Ilkka Laitinen.

The agency initially struggled to recruit staff due to its location in Warsaw, which offered lower pay than some other cities, and the unclear agency mandate. As of February 2012, the Frontex website lists its secretariat as consisting of 272 seconded national experts, temporary, auxiliary and contract staff. The dependency of the organisation on staff secondments has been identified by external auditors as a risk, since valuable experience may be lost when such staff leave the organisation and return to their permanent jobs.

Special European Border Forces of rapidly deployable border guards, called Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABIT) who are armed and patrol cross-country land borders, were created by EU interior ministers in April 2007 to assist in border control, particularly on Europe's southern coastlines. Frontex's European Patrols Network began work in the Canary Islands in May 2007 and armed border force officers were deployed to the Greco-Turkish border in October 2010.

Naval, Land and Air surveillance Patrols carried out by Frontex are contributed to not only by EU members, but by other Schengen area countries such as Iceland, which sent the Naval coast guard vessel Ægir to Frontex patrols in the Atlantic ocean (south of Canary islands) and the Mediterranean in 2010. Frontex uses Satellite tracking of air and land borders as well as the EU-funded Sea Horse advanced satellite system to track ships.

Criticism
In an NGO Statement on International Protection presented at the UNHCR Standing Committee in 2008 a broad coalition of non-governmental organisations have expressed their concern, that much of the rescue work by Frontex is in fact incidental to a deterrence campaign so broad and, at times, so undiscriminating, that directly and through third countries – intentionally or not – asylum-seekers are being blocked from claiming protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

According to European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) and British Refugee Council in written evidence submitted to the UK House of Lords inquiry, Frontex fails to demonstrate adequate consideration of international and European asylum and human rights law including the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and EU law in respect of access to asylum and the prohibition of refoulement.

In addition ECRE and British Refugee Council have expressed a worry with the lack of clarity regarding Frontex accountability for ensuring compliance with international and EC legal obligations by Member States involved in Frontex coordinated operations. This is compounded by the lack of transparency, and the absence of independent monitoring and democratic accountability of the Agency.

Turkish incidents
In September 2009, a Turkish military radar issued a warning to a Latvian helicopter patrolling in the eastern Aegean—part of the EU's Frontex programme to combat illegal immigration—to leave the area. The Turkish General Staff reported that the Latvian Frontex aircraft had violated Turkish airspace west of Didim. According to a Hellenic Air Force announcement, the incident occurred as the Frontex helicopter—identified as an Italian-made Agusta A109—was patrolling in Greek air space near the small isle of Farmakonisi, which lies on a favourite route used by migrant smugglers ferrying mostly Third World migrants into Greece and the EU from the opposite Turkish coastline. Frontex officials stated that they simply ignored the Turkish warnings as they were not in Turkish airspace and continued their duties. Frontex later took photographs of the Turkish Coast Guard escorting illegal immigrants towards Greek waters and the photos accompanied by written evidence were submitted to EU authorities.

Another incident took place on October 2009 in the aerial area above the eastern Aegean sea, off the island of Lesbos. On 20 November 2009, the Turkish General Staff issued a press note alleging that an Estonian Border Guard aircraft Let L-410 UVP taking off from Kos on a Frontex mission had violated Turkish airspace west of Söke.

Operation Hermes
The so-called "Joint Operation Hermes" began 20 February 2011 after Italy asked the surveillance of the Mediterranean between Italy and North Africa (the southern border of the EU). During this period the no-fly zone with Libya came into effect and combat operations started on 20 March 2011. The Netherlands has a Coast Guard Dornier 228 aircraft with air force crew and Portugal an air force C-295MPA stationed at Malta and Pantelleria. Operation Hermes has been ineffective in so far as "increased from 1,124 detections in Q1 2013 to 5,311 in Q2 in 2013." Many African immigrants have continued to risk their lives to reach Italian shores on board of old boats and several of these trips ended tragically, with capsized boats and hundreds of people drowning in the sea even if the Italian navy saved and continues to save thousand of human lives thanks to operation Mare Nostrum.

Risk Analysis Reports
Frontex regularly releases reports analyzing events related to border control, irregular border crossing and different forms of cross-border crime. The general task of assessing these risks has been laid out in FRONTEX founding regulation, according to which the agency shall "carry out risk analyses [...] in order to provide the Community and the Member States with adequate information to allow for appropriate measures to be taken or to tackle identified threats and risks with a view to improving the integrated management of external borders". FRONTEX's key institution with respect to intelligence and risk assessment is its Risk Analysis Unit (RAU) and the FRONTEX Risk Analysis Network (FRAN), via which the FRONTEX staff is cooperating with security experts from the Member States.

The latest FRAN report as of 2013 states that 24 805 illegal border-crossing were detected. In the Eastern Mediterranean area (specifically at the land border between Greece and Turkey), detections were down by nearly 70% compared to the second quarter of 2012, but up in the Central Mediterranean route.