Brussels wants a bigger Frontex: up to 30,000 agents for borders and returns

The European Commission has proposed a structural reform of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. It was presented by the Commissioner for Home Affairs Magnus Brunner. The stated goal is to transform the agency into the Union’s central actor for the management of external borders and for carrying out the returns of third-country nationals without a residence permit.

The most concrete point of the plan concerns the numbers: Frontex’s standing corps should rise to up to 30,000 agents, through a new European Border and Return Reserve. This is a figure that, if confirmed during the legislative process, would represent a leap in scale compared with the agency’s current operational capacity. Frontex was established in 2004 as a coordination structure and has been expanded several times in subsequent years precisely in response to migratory pressures on the Union’s external borders.

Centralising return-related competences in a single agency means, in practice, reducing the operational autonomy that Member States currently have on a matter that has so far remained largely in the hands of national administrations. This is a point on which, during negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council, both the resistance of governments most protective of their prerogatives and the objections of organisations that have for years denounced the conditions under which Frontex operates at the borders will be tested.

At present the proposal is a negotiating basis put forward by the Commission, not an approved text: it will have to be examined by the European Parliament and the Council, where the figures and mechanisms could be changed. This newspaper notes that the news currently comes from a single source (the Dire agency); it has not been possible to obtain independent confirmation of the proposal or of the figures reported. The article will be updated should further sources emerge, starting with the text of the Commission’s proposal itself.