As Frontex boss resigns over human rights violations, MEPs refuse budget for border agency

MEPs threw down the approval of the budget the EU’s border control agency Frontex with 492 votes in favour.

The vote came days after Frontex head Fabrice Leggeri resigned after being investigated by the union’s anti-fraud agency, OLAF, amid numerous reports of its complicity in illegal pushbacks of asylum seekers.

MEPs said Frontex failed to fulfill conditions laid out in a previous discharge report, apart from the OLAF investigation.

Fabrice Leggeri, who has been criticised by the European parliament for failure to protect the human rights of people seeking asylum in the EU, announced his resignation shortly before Frontex’s management board were to decide whether to take disciplinary action against him.

The anti-fraud agency OLAF called for disciplinary action against Leggeri and two other Frontex officials, for covering up human rights violations.

Leggeri, a French national who held senior posts in his country’s interior and defence ministries, has led Frontex since 2015. After the 2015 migration crisis, EU leaders agreed to give the Warsaw-based agency more powers, staff and money. By 2027, Frontex is due to have 10,000 border and coast guards and its budget has already increased more than 19-fold since its creation in 2006.

Leggeri has faced heavy criticism, including from a special committee at the European parliament that last year accused the agency of failing to protect the human rights of asylum seekers.

The cross-party committee said Frontex had carried out only a superficial investigation into alleged illegal pushbacks at the EU’s borders. Leggeri was personally criticised for his failure to appoint 40 human rights monitors as required under EU law, while lavishly staffing his own private office. MEPs found he had appointed 63 people to his private office, more than twice the number of people working in the cabinet of president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

Rapporteur Tomáš Zdechovský (EPP) said: “Frontex operates in challenging circumstances and with its enhanced role comes the need for effective management and greater accountability. Though the Agency has made progress in the last year, we currently do not have enough information to make a well-informed decision to grant discharge. We therefore postpone this decision to autumn 2022.”

The discharge allows MEPs to see how public funds have been spent and how EU projects are being carried out. They can approve the budget implementation of the EU institutions and agencies for individual years.

Following this result the EU bodies whose discharge has been postponed will have to provide additional information and address the concerns raised by MEPs, before a second vote is held in Parliament in September or October. The parliament signed off on the majority of 2020 budgets save for Frontex, the European Economic and Social Committee, and the European Council.