Season 2 of the @frontex saga today, w meeting of management board. Yesterday the agency responded to @EUparliament @EU_Commission questions on reporting in @derspiegel and partners on migrant #pushpacks. I hear many recipients were not thrilled 1/ spiegel.de/politik/auslan…
But first, a Season 1 recap: SPIEGEL and media partners @LHreports , @bellingcat , ARD’s @reportmainz & the Japanese TV Asahi had reported that Frontex had been involved in at least six so-called pushbacks in the vicinity and in at least one directly since April. 2/
On November 10th, the Frontex management board held an extraordinary meeting on the subject, at the behest of EU Commissioner @YlvaJohansson. She wants to know from Frontex boss Fabrice Leggeri whether his agency is involved in human rights violations in the Aegean. 3/
[Pause for comic relief: In keeping with the times, it was a video conference. But the meeting of these top security officials was plagued by the same connection, voice/video quality problems many work-at-home mortals mortals also face. Cyprus was hardly able to participate] 4/
During that meeting, Leggeri submitted an internal report to participants SPIEGEL was able to review. It confirmed our reporting that Frontex units were close to the pushbacks reported. But left open whether there were legal violations... 5/
...these cannot be conclusively assessed at this stage, including because of the poor visibility and exact dates of the incidents, it said. We will respond to this in more detail in due time... 6/
A main Frontex argument: since nothing was reported in so-called "serious incident reports", there is also no evidence of pushbacks. In the spirit of the philosophical thought experiment "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” 7/
According to our info, many participants and observers at the meeting considered this explanation poor. The fact that Frontex HQ received no reports of the pushbacks is more an indication of faulty internal reporting rather than the absence of illegal practices 8/
As late as October, even as media, international organisations and NGOs' reporting on pushbacks was mounting, Leggeri insisted he was convinced by Greeks everything is done by the book. Athens had dispelled his doubts, as he put in an interview with a German newspaper. 9/
At the board meeting, he softened his tune, saying these were preliminary results to be followed up by more scrutiny. 10/
Why all this matters: Frontex is to be massively upgraded. From a budget of roughly 6 mil euros in 2005, it could get more than 1 billion in 2021 - plus a standing force to be deployed at external borders of the EU. 11/
There is a vague hope associated with the tax billions: The Frontex officials will not only control the borders, but also ensure compliance with European law. 12/
So how about this monitoring? Frontex own rules dictate reporting human right violations or any other serious incidents. In practice, such events only come out in the open when individual crews refuse to obey orders. 13/
This is what happened on March 2 when Greece ordered a Danish Frontex crew to put migrants already rescued on a dinghy and return them to Turkish waters. Danish crew refused. Finally, the Greek command center withdrew the order and migrants were brought on the island of Kos. 14/
The incident reached Frontex headquarters on March 6th after the Danish media reported it. Frontex was certain that it was an "isolated case". No "Serious Incident Report" as prescribed in such cases was filed. 15/
Testifying before the European Parliament in July Leggeri described the incident as a "misunderstanding". A Greek coast guard officer on site did not understand the operation plan. 16/
But the Danish case is not an outlier. At the November 10 MB meeting, the Swedish border police chief said that a Swedish Frontex crew wanted to compile a "Serious Incident Report" on October 30th. The Frontex official in charge advised him not to do so. 17/
Which begs the question: are Frontex crews really in a position to act as watchdogs? Or is camaraderie and a misplaced esprit de corps a higher priority for many of them? 18/
That wouldn’t be such a problem if the Frontex office responsible for monitoring human rights’ violations was robust. But it has been chronically understaffed and for a long time the head of the office is an ad interim official that used to serve at the Leggeri cabinet. 19/
This had raised conflict of interest concerns, which Frontex and the EU Commission dismiss 20/
But even when the Rights Office does raise the alarm, little happens. In March, as thousands of migrants tried to cross the Greek land border in an organized attempt by Turkey, Frontex hastily sent reinforcements. Leggeri was advised by the FRO to reconsider deployment 21/
The FRO cited strong indications of fundamental rights violations, according to a letter seen by SPIEGEL. Leggeri dismissed it. 22/
Lately, a new FRO position and a call to hire human rights monitors has been published by the Agency. Also, Frontex vowed it will follow several lines of investigation into the media reported incidents. 23/
These are all welcome news, as long as the investigators get to the bottom of the truth 24/
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