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At least since the height of the so called European migrant crisis in 2015, that was
characterized by large numbers of people arriving in the European Union, there has been an ongoing
process of finding answers to the challenges of increased migration.
The number of new asylum seekers arriving in the EU, which peaked in 2015 has now decreased,
though displaced people continue to arrive.
And there is still plenty of discussion between EU member states regarding how to approach
immigration into the Union.
In order to meet these challenges, the EU is currently setting up an agency with the
task of guaranteeing European border protection.
The European Border and Coast Guard Agency - Frontex.
It is currently growing rapidly and its responsibilities are expanding.
But this new agency is controversial and the difficulties in setting up such an organization
shows that there are still major disagreements on the issue of migration.
Within the European Union there is the so-called Schengen area.
Within this area, no systematic border controls take place.
The borders between the EU countries are therefore open, although temporary controls are allowed,
for example due to exceptional circumstances, such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
The EU countries of Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Cyprus are not yet part of the Schengen
area, but are all pursuing a path towards joining as well.
Because of the fact that checks and controls have generally been abolished at internal
European national borders due to Schengen, the protection of external borders is increasingly
seen as a common European task.
However, each EU country coordinated its border security on its own, which can lead to problems.
For this reason, in 2005, Frontex was launched.
The agency is based in Warsaw and is intended to connect the various departments and police
authorities of individual EU member states and coordinate joint operations.
Migrants arrive in the EU via a number of different routes.
For example, the land route from Turkey to either Bulgaria or Greece.
From here they often continue their journey along the Balkan route to the border region
of Croatia and the Schengen countries of Hungary and Slovenia.
But a large number of routes taken by migrants to enter the EU lead across the sea, for example
from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos.
Or the longer route for people traveling from Libya and Tunisia to the Italian island of
Lampedusa or to Malta.
Another route is the Western Mediterranean route, from Morocco to the southern coast
of Spain.
As well as land routes to the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta or Melilla.
Along these main routes Frontex is most present, as can be seen by their key areas of operation.
Here, the agency is monitoring and analyzing the situation at the EU border and supports
search and rescue operations.
The agency is intended to support the local police, for example by providing additional
agents that can help with the registration of people or the return of rejected asylum
seekers.
Another focus is the combat of border crime such as drug trafficking.
In order to protect the EU borders, Frontex also acts in non-EU countries.
In the past, however, Frontex did not have its own agents.
So they were dependent on equipment and staff from the EU member states, who lent their
resources to the European Agency.
The agency also lacked a mandate to carry out its own operations.
This led to calls for the organization to be rebuilt and strengthened.
For several years now, the scope of tasks, staff and the budget of the agency have been
increased enormously every year.
In 2014 the agency's budget was 98 million euros.
As of this year 2021, that number had risen to 544 million euros.
And most recently, Frontex was granted a 5.6 billion-euro budget for a 7 year timespan
until 2027, which would amount to 800 million euros per year.
On January 11, 2021, the agency tweeted: “For the first time, the European Union
has its own uniformed service – the European Border and Coast Guard standing corps.”
Instead of just lending officials from EU member states, the agency is now hiring its
own staff.
And this standing reserve is to be expanded to 10,000 civil servants by 2027.
"This is our property.
For the first time the agency will have its own patrol car.
This is just the beginning."
"Do you know what comes next?"
"We will have vans that will be used as mobile offices for the registration of irregular migrants".
"And do you know what comes next?"
"We will have vessels, planes, drones, and many other types of technical equipment that
will be deployed at the external borders."
Frontex is heavily investing in equipment and technologies and has recently been criticized
for not disclosing meetings with lobby representatives, for example from the arms industry.
The agency relies heavily on monitoring cross border regions from the air.
Since 2017, surveillance aircraft have been used extensively, which are equipped with
cameras.
The imagery is fed into a central digital system developed by Frontex, Eurosur.
In the future, the agency wants to further increase the use of air surveillance using
unmanned drones.
Two contracts for the operation of such drones were finalized last year.
One of them, a joint contract with the European multinational Airbus group and the state-owned
Israel Aerospace Industries for the operation of the Heron drone.
And another contract with Elbit Systems, a private Israeli arms manufacturer for the
Hermes drones.
The two contracts each have a volume of 50 million euros.
The unarmed drones should serve to spot migrants and to monitor the border situation.
However, some of the agency's operations are extremely controversial and critics often
accuse the agency of violating European principles as well as international law.
In 2020 the New York Times published a report that outlined how Frontex was involved in
covering up a so-called push-back of migrants to Turkey by Greek authorities.
A push-back is the practice of pushing migrants back from the border of their destination
country.
In the European Union, this highly controversial practice is mostly seen as a violation of
the principle of non-refoulement.
This principle is anchored in Article 33 of the Geneva Refugee Convention and it forbids
countries to send asylum seekers back to a nation in which they are likely to face persecution.
Nevertheless, reports are increasing that such pushbacks have taken place.
In a specific case documented in the article, Greek coast guards at the island of Chios
pushed back a rubber boat full of migrants to Turkey
There have also been numerous reports of dangerous maneuvers in which European coast guards speed
past rubber boats with migrants at high speed in order to create waves and force people back
And this video published by Turkish Authorities shows Greek Coast Guards shooting into the
water close to the boat.
Critics see the increased use of airplanes and drones as opposed to ships as a tactic
by Frontex to continue pushbacks under the guise of surveillance.
Under the UN convention on the law of the sea, all ships are obligated to offer assistance
to a vessel in distress.
However, drones are not affected by this rule and therefore the use of air surveillance
allows Frontex to monitor the Mediterranean without getting involved in rescue missions.
In addition, Frontex shares the information it has gathered with the Turkish and Libyan
coast guards.
For example, Libya is the first non-EU country which received the coordinates of refugee
boats from Frontex.
Because Frontex is forbidden to do push backs, the agency is increasingly concentrating on
surveillance and coordinating with the Libyan coast guard.
Instead of push backs, these are so-called pull-backs.
So let's take a closer look at the role of the Libyan Coast Guard and this cooperation.
What is certain is that the European Union is supporting the Libyan Coast Guard in building
capacities and training staff.
In addition to financial aid from the EU amounting to 91 million euros for setting up border
protection, Italy also donated equipment directly, including Coast Guard vessels.
The cooperation with the Libyan Coast Guard is highly controversial.
While advocates argue that this support can save additional people from distress at sea,
critics see the close cooperation as an outsourcing of EU border controls and a transfer of responsibility
towards Libyan authorities that operate outside the European Convention on Human Rights.
And due to the unstable political situation in the country, the Libyan Coast Guard is
an organization controlled by very different parties in depending on the region.
With some parties accused of actually cooperating with smugglers.
In addition, returning to Libya is dangerous for many migrants and there is a risk of imprisonment
and sometimes torture.
With Frontex, the European Union is strengthening an agency that now plays a much greater role
as their budget, staffing and field of operations has expanded enormously.
From an agency initially created to improve coordination between EU countries, it has
now become its own force with wide technical capabilities.
Instead of mediating between police authorities, Frontex has effectively become its own European
law enforcement that simultaneously collects a high degree of intelligence through surveillance.
While the agency was created so that all EU countries would jointly bear the challenges
of border protection, the controversial discussions about Frontex also show that within the European
Union there is still no uniform idea of ​​how to approach these challenges.
An issue which doesn’t only affect Europe.
Within the last 10 years, the number of people that are forcibly displaced around the world
has risen rapidly; yet, portraying how this issue has increased is difficult, as such
large numbers can often appear abstract.
Therefore, over the last couple of months I have created a dedicated video about this
issue that puts some of the figures around global displacement into a new perspective
using 3D animation.
And I am really excited to finally share this project that I have been working on for so long.
You can now watch my short film THE UNKNOWN CITY exclusively on Nebula.
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Nebula is a place where I as a creator can explore new ideas that might not work on YouTube
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Many of us creators at Nebula have started to upload extended cuts and bonus sections
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