Frontex was a knee-jerk reaction to migration, Leo Brincat tells MPs

The significant risks faced by Frontex and flagged by the European Court of Auditors stem from the fact that Frontex was a knee-jerk reaction to the migration crisis, auditor Leo Brincat told MPs on Tuesday.

The former environment minister, now a member of the European Court of Auditors, addressed a joint parliamentary committee to discuss the results of an audit report on Frontex’s support to external border management.

During the meeting, he suggested that one of Frontex’s primary issues is that it is the result of a knee-jerk reaction to migration pressure.

“Frontex was born as a reaction to the strong migration factor that we’ve had for a while. But when you create an organisation on impulse there’s a tendency for politics to come before economy and other considerations. That’s what we think happened,” Brincat said.

Brincat is the lead author of a critical audit on Frontex operations that found “significant risk” that Frontex will struggle to carry out its mandate received in 2019.

He explained to MPs that the external borders issue isn’t being tackled effectively, and that Frontex needs to accept and understand everyone’s situation.

“It is troubling that Frontex is being given new responsibilities but at the same time hasn’t effectively discharged its 2016 duties and obligations,” he said.

“When we create an organisation, it’s important to have design, implementation and monitoring. In our understanding, there were weaknesses right across the board. They were biting more than they can chew,” Brincat warned.

He added that Frontex tends to operate in a silo, with little to no collaboration with other EU entities. He also noted a major skills mismatch in the allocation of people throughout the entity.

The initial audit from the European Court of Auditors concluded that although a functioning information exchange framework is in place to support the fight against illegal immigration, it did not function well enough to provide accurate, complete and up-to-date situational awareness of the EU’s external borders.

It also found that Frontex activities were not sufficiently developed to provide effective support to Member States or Shengen countries.

Frontex is the EU agency tasked with promoting, coordinating and developing European border management. It was founded in 2005, but was rebranded to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency in 2016.