Should Frontex take a bigger role guarding European borders?

• Supporters want to expand number of Frontex troops
• Auditors say Frontex still lagging on previous responsibilities
• Critics say EU border agency needs more accountability

LONDON - Equipped with its own uniforms and thousands of troops stationed at border crossings and airports in Europe and beyond, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency is the European Union’s biggest and richest agency. 

Better known as Frontex, the force set up to help manage the bloc's communal border also bears the taint of allegations that it is complicit in violent and forceful migrant returns.

Now with a review set for 2026, discussions and debate over the agency's role, capabilities and likely expansion are under way, with plenty of scrutiny over how it has performed so far.

The European Commission, the EU’s ruling body, has pledged to expand Frontex's standing corps to 30,000 by 2027, and lawmakers are pushing to give the agency more power to work with non-EU countries and remove illegal migrants. 

Set up in 2004, Frontex operates with a budget of 922 million euros and 2,500 staff charged with managing borders and tackling cross-border crime.

As the bloc’s concerns with migration and border security have grown, Frontex’s mandate has already been reviewed and expanded four times by the Commission.

But critics say Frontex has handled its previous reforms poorly, driven by salience and rhetoric that outpace its accountability and monitoring capability.

The EC's pledge to triple its current target of 10,000 Frontex standing corps by 2027 is rooted in populist politics and misguided, said Tineke Strik, a member of the European Parliament and the Schengen and Borders Scrutiny Working Group that monitors Frontex activity.

“Calling for the strengthening of Frontex capacities is a way to have a clear-cut answer to voters who have been made subject to fear mongering that we have floods of irregular migrants,” Strik said. 

From supportive role to operational force

Frontex has evolved from having a supportive role tasked with coordinating member states’ implementation of common border laws to being an operational force with a significant border presence.

Its mandate includes border surveillance and the detection of illicit travellers, items or identification documents to assisting in search-and-rescue operations, collecting data on security risks and organising deportations.

Between 2008 and 2024, Frontex paid out more than 2 billion euros in grants to member states for human resources, technical equipment and border and returns projects.

Its budget grew by 63% from 2015 to 2016, spurred by a political crisis at Europe’s borders after one million people irregularly entered in 2015.

“Frontex has become the face of all EU security-related Schengen and returns policies,” said Sergio Carrera, a researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels-based think tank.

The EU's Schengen free-travel area is comprised of countries whose residents can travel without passport checks and includes 25 member states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

“The crisis mode of governance gave the impetus for presenting Frontex as the solution for a phenomenon related to access to international protection and reception conditions,” he said.

In 2016, the regulation governing Frontex was overhauled, changing its name to the European Border and Coast Guard from the Agency of Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union.

It also was given more operational powers to support border control and help member states combat illegal immigration and cross-border crime.

In 2019, the EU expanded Frontex's operational capabilities further by introducing the uniformed standing corps that could carry firearms and conduct border checks.

The European Court of Auditors (ECA) said Frontex was not ready for the 2019 increase in resources as it had failed to support member states with fighting illegal immigration and cross-border crime and also had not taken the necessary measures to fulfill its 2016 mandate.

Calls for accountability, transparency

In addition to expanding Frontex’s ground presence, the update next year should focus on its “increasingly important” role in illegal migrant returns, the EC has said. 

The Commission has issued a call for evidence to show that Frontex’s return capabilities are limited by human and budget constraints and an inability to organise returns among third countries.

It said it seeks to improve Frontex’s cooperation with third countries for returns and could expand the activities Frontex can carry out, including organising returns between such countries.

Frontex currently has the power to identify people for removal and help organise deportations. It also can deploy staff in third countries, train their national guards and exchange information.

But expanding its powers outside of the EU raises questions of how it is held accountable, said Strik.

The European Parliament has cited concern that the EU’s scrutiny has not kept pace with Frontex’s expanding responsibilities and last year adopted a resolution calling for the border agency to take a more proactive approach to transparency to ensure greater accountability.

A Frontex Scrutiny Working Group (FSWG) was set up in 2021 by the EU to monitor the agency after years of allegations that it was complicit in forceful returns at borders, known as pushbacks.

Frontex was accused of ignoring incidences of authorities in Greece, Hungary and Bulgaria using violent methods, such as pushing inflatable dinghies back out to sea, to intercept migrants at EU borders, often causing injuries.

The issue came to a head in 2022 with the resignation of Fabrice Leggeri as Frontex director after the FSWG found the agency failed to prevent and deliberately avoided reporting rights violations.

The FSWG was replaced last year by the Schengen and Borders Scrutiny Working Group, whose effectiveness Strik and other critics say is impeded by the European People’s Party (EPP) that holds the chair.

The EPP, the biggest party in the European Parliament, campaigned in 2024 to expand Frontex’s standing corps, budget and equipment.

“I don't see that the Commission is holding Frontex accountable,” said Strik.

(Reporting by Beatrice Tridimas; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst.)