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Analysis: Violence at a distance: Frontex’s increasing role outside the EU

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11 February 2025

The EU tries to keep ‘unwanted’ people out by outsourcing border control to non-EU states. Frontex, the EU’s border agency, play a key role in a “web of violent deterrence” that is deeply-rooted in Europe’s colonial past. Every year, the agency publishes a report on its work in and with non-EU states. The latest edition demonstrates how its role has expanded, whilst glossing over or ignoring human rights violations.

Document: Cooperation between Frontex and third countries in 2023 (pdf)

Frontex cooperation with non-EU states

Frontex's work on border externalisation is part of a broader strategy to distance the EU from the violence promoted by its attempts to control migration. That strategy involves a “web of violent deterrence,” in the words of Medecins Sans Frontieres.

It has strong historical continuities with Europe’s colonial past, helping to maintain “European political and economic influence over former colonised territories while simultaneously restricting the movement of people who were once colonised.”

This plays out in various ways. It means supporting violent pushbacks at the EU’s borders, with limited – if any – means for those affected to seek accountability and justice. It means using the Russian invasion of Ukraine to expand Frontex’s role in both Ukraine and Moldova. It means setting up data-sharing arrangements with non-EU states, that could be used to direct interception and pushback operations.

Unsurprisingly, the agency’s own report does not take these issues into account. Where they are mentioned, they are instead framed in a technical, bureaucratic manner.

Frontex’s mandate for cooperation

Frontex has a wide mandate when it comes to cooperation with third countries. This role has expanded over time, with new tasks granted to the agency in 2016 and 2019. Amongst other things, Frontex can:

• deploy “border management” teams, made up of European border guards, in non-EU states;
• assist in training non-EU states’ border guards;
• support cooperation on deportation and readmission; and
• assist with technical and operational cooperation between EU member states and non-EU states.

According to the report, in 2023 Frontex focused its cooperation efforts primarily on the Western Balkans, as well as Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova. The “Southern Neighbourhood” and West Africa were other priority locations.

Building up border control in pre-accession states

For a state to join the EU, it must go through the “accession” process. This requires alignment of law, policy and practice with EU norms. In 2023, states supposedly on the path to EU membership were prioritised by Frontex.

The agency currently has joint operations in:

• Albania (since 2019);
• Moldova (2022);
• Montenegro (2020);
• North Macedonia (2023); and
• Serbia (2021).

The report highlights Frontex’s status agreement with Albania, approved in September 2023. This builds upon the 2019 agreement. The new agreement allows the deployment of Frontex officials from its ‘standing corps’ of border guards at Albania’s borders with any neighbouring country. Previously, Frontex officials could only operate at Albania’s borders with Greece, due to Greece being an EU member state.

Frontex’s cooperation with Albania has been accused of failing to uphold human rights. Border Violence Monitoring Network has reported violence and pushbacks being used against people at the border between Albania and Greece.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Frontex and the Albanian ombudsman (Avokati i Popullit) was signed in 2022. This set out a complaint mechanism for the agency’s joint operations with Albania’s border guards. However, it divides responsibility between the two sides. This runs counter to recommendations from the European Ombudsman, who argued that such a system would complicate the procedure and make accountability for rights violations more difficult.

Frontex’s decision to ignore the Ombudsman’s recommendations reflects broader concerns about its expanding mandate and powers, which lack the necessary safeguards to ensure the protection of human and fundamental rights.

The agency’s growing ties with pre-accession countries are also demonstrated through its operation in Moldova. For the first time in a non-EU state, Frontex standing corps officers deployed in Moldova were able to access national databases and check travellers’ passports. The operation is referenced multiple times throughout the report.

The agreement between the EU and Moldova is a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has been used by the EU to significantly expand Frontex’s role in both Moldova and Ukraine. “The priorities are clear – enact agreements, even in the midst of a war, that guarantee business as usual along the EU’s external borders, no matter the human costs,” the Transnational Institute has argued.

Cooperation with Montenegro also increased in 2023, following the signing of an agreement with the EU. As well as border surveillance, Frontex’s role in the country includes “debriefing and screening interviews.” These interviews have been heavily-criticised for targeting “isolated or mistreated”  individuals, and Frontex’s sharing of interview data with Europol was found to be a “severe breach” of the law. Strict limits have now been placed on how the data obtained can be used and shared.

The report also says that in 2023, Moldova, Montenegro and North Macedonia were connected to the European Border Surveillance System, EUROSUR. This collects data from satellites, border surveillance operations and elsewhere to provide “situational awareness” to border guards.

This data sharing with non-EU states has been criticised for its ability to support pushbacks: non-EU states that receive “precise locations of people on the move on their territory could then expel these persons from their territory.”

Beyond Europe: cooperation in Africa and the Middle East

In 2023, cooperation activities continued to expand well beyond the EU’s immediate ‘buffer zone’ in the Balkans and eastern Europe. Technical equipment was supplied to multiple African states, and multiple training activities took place.

Frontex’s expanding role in Africa has been the source of concern among scholars and activists. It is part of broader policies, including the provision by the EU of funding and equipment, that make it increasingly difficult for migrants in the North of Africa to reach Europe in a safe manner. According to a recent report by Médecins Sans Frontières, EU externalisation practices have violently trapped people seeking protection from countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

The Africa-Frontex Intelligence Community (AFIC) was established in 2010 to increase information sharing between Frontex and thirty African states. The agency has no formal cooperation agreement with the vast majority of those countries.

In February 2023, a six-year project to strengthen AFIC states’ ability to “fight serious cross-border crimes affecting Africa and the EU” concluded. Through this, Frontex trained border police analysts in eight AFIC countries,^[1] and supplied equipment for Risk Analysis Cells (RACs).

This includes at least one Universal Forensic Extraction Device, a controversial tool “capable of retrieving call logs, photos, GPS locations and WhatsApp messages from any phone.” This was acquired by the Senegalese authorities through EU support, along with “biometric fingerprinting and facial recognition software, drones, digital servers, night-vision goggles and more,” according to the journalist Andrei Popviciu.

The Frontex-led project ‘EU4BorderSecurity’, seeks to “enhance border security in North Africa and the Levant,” whilst facilitating and supporting “bona fide travel.” It involves cooperation with:

• Algeria;
• Egypt;
• Israel;
• Jordan;
• Lebanon;
• Libya;
• Morocco;
• Palestine;
• Syria; and
• Tunisia.

The project has involved training workshops, “familiarisation visits” for Egyptian and Tunisian officials to Frontex HQ in Warsaw, meetings between member states of the EU and the League of Arab States. The Frontex report says that, despite geopolitical developments (presumably, Israel’s war on Palestine), they have “maintained a good pace of implementation.”

Frontex’s cooperation with the so-called Libyan Coast Guard has been the subject of longstanding critique and controversy. Through its surveillance operations, the agency gathers and shares the coordinates of boats departing from Libya with militia groups in the country, enabling interception at sea and ‘pullbacks’ to detention, violence and abuse. 

The report does not detail Frontex’s cooperation with Libya. It does state that there were four investigations into “instances of fundamental rights violations by Libyan search and rescue actors at sea that occurred following Frontex’s sightings.” However, those investigations “did not entail outreach to the Libyan authorities.”

Border control operations, surveillance and more

The report also covers multiple other developments. This includes a brief overview of more limited cooperation with the so-called ‘Silk Route’ and central Asian countries, including Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

It also notes other issues likely to be of interest to researchers and activists, including:

• efforts to “enhance intelligence exchange” with the USA and Canada;
• coordination of ‘Joint Action Days’ on cross-border crime, resulting in hundreds of arrests and large-scale seizures of illicit goods such as weapons and drugs;
• ongoing cooperation with Interpol, particularly on false documents;
• the ongoing expansion of Frontex’s role in the EU’s deportation regime (the agency aided the deportation of almost 40,000 people in 2023, according to the report);
• training courses for almost 400 non-EU officials on topics such as firearms detection, document inspection and risk analysis; and
• plans to expand the use of drones for surveillance.

These forms of cooperation are now firmly-entrenched in Frontex’s work, and are likely to become more deeply-embedded in the years to come. The aim is to export the EU’s model of border management to countries near and far, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that unwanted people are kept out of EU territory. Resisting the violence and abuse involved in this project will require increasing transnational cooperation between those seeking to hold the EU, and Frontex, to account.

Marloes Streppel

Notes

[1] Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Togo.