Frontex, the EU-funded organization with a budget of 758m euros, is being investigated for previous allegations of complicity with the Greek authorities in the illegal repulsion of asylum seekers, which the organization has denied. Now a joint survey by Lighthouse Reports, Der Spiegel, SRF Rundschau, Republik and Le Monde has revealed Frontex’s involvement in what appears to be repulsions, according to its own database. According to the joint investigation, a Freedom of Information (FoI) request found that the service’s internal case reporting database, called Jora, recorded views of repatriates of asylum seekers in the Aegean who were described by officials as “departure prevention”. The Frontex guidelines define this as an incident where migrants are stopped at sea by non-European authorities in their territorial waters and sent back to their point of departure. Frontex provided a revised version of the database, but included descriptions of 145 “exit departure” cases, which differed from reports from the Turkish Coast Guard about the same incidents, witnesses, leaked documents and other confidential sources when leaked. In at least 22 cases, asylum seekers disembarked in boats, boarded Greek rafts and were swept into the sea. On May 28 last year, a group of almost 50 asylum seekers who had already landed on the Greek island of Lesvos contacted the Norwegian NGO Aegean Boat Report, sending photos and a WhatsApp message showing their location near the island’s capital, Mytilene. Hours later, some of the group were found by the Turkish Coast Guard at sea in orange life rafts. This case was later recorded in the Frontex database as a “departure deterrent”. Two Frontex sources told reporters that the illegal repulsions in the Aegean ended up in the Jora database as a “departure deterrent”. “Why don’t they just call it ‘repulsion’ and get over it?” said a Greek Coast Guard officer. Human rights groups have described the repulsions in the Aegean as “systematic”. New allegations against Frontex come ahead of Switzerland’s May 15 referendum on the country’s involvement with the EU border service. In 2021, Switzerland donated CHF 24 million to the agency and the government plans to increase this donation to the 61 million Swiss francs by 2027. But opponents of the agency’s expansion say it will make Switzerland directly responsible for human rights abuses on Europe’s borders. The referendum came after a petition that garnered more than 62,000 signatures in favor of cutting the agency’s funding. Greece and Frontex deny allegations of repulsion, say officials are complying with human rights law, but there has been growing pressure on Frontex CEO Fabrice Legger and the EU has frozen part of its budget as investigators . Immigrants protest repulsions at the border with Turkey, near the Greek parliament in Athens on February 20, 2022. Photo: Louiza Gouliamaki / AFP / Getty Images Tineke Strik, a Dutch MEP and member of the Frontex Audit Team, called for the suspension of the border service in Greece. “We needed a fundamental change in the culture” of the EU Border Patrol, he said, including a change of leadership because Legger “has lost his credibility in taking fundamental rights seriously”. “[Frontex] “It should suspend its activities in Greece,” Strick said. “We have so many credible reports from authorities like the United Nations and the European Council that they all say repulsions are systematic. “More needs to be done, otherwise you become part of the violations and complicit – and that is the problem with Frontex.” Frontex said it had no authority to investigate the actions of individual countries and that it “ensures and promotes respect for fundamental rights in all border management activities”. The service said that “it is fully committed to complying with the highest standards of border control in our operations and our officers are bound by a code of conduct. This is the model we bring to each of our operations. “ In a statement, the agency added: “Fundamental rights, including respect for the principle of non-refoulement, are at the heart of all the agency’s activities.” Non-refoulement is a fundamental principle underpinning international refugee law: a person in need of protection cannot be forcibly returned to a place of harm. He added that staff were required to report any breaches of rights and that the service had more than 20 observers.
