The
European Border and Coast Guard Agency, also known as Frontex (from
French:
Frontières extérieures for "external borders"), is an
agency of the European Union headquartered in
Warsaw,
Poland, tasked with
border control of the European Schengen Area, in coordination with the border and coast guards of Schengen Area member states.
Frontex was established in
2004 as the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders and is primarily responsible for coordinating border control efforts. In response to the
European migrant crisis of 2015–2016, the
European Commission proposed on 15 December 2015 to extend Frontex's mandate and to transform it into a fully-fledged European Border and Coast Guard Agency. On 18 December 2015, the
European Council roundly supported the proposal, and after a vote by the
European Parliament, the European Border and Coast Guard was officially launched on 6 October 2016 at the Bulgarian external border with Turkey.
To enable the agency to carry out its tasks, its budget would be gradually increased from the €143 million originally planned for 2015 up to €238 million in 2016, €281 million in 2017, and will reach
€322 million (about
US$350 million) in
2020. The
staff of the agency would gradually increase from 402 members in 2016 to
1,000 by 2020.
2005–2016: European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders Frontex, then officially the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders, was established by Council of Regulation (EC) 2007/2004. It began work on 3 October 2005 and was the first EU agency to be based in one of the new EU member states from 2004. Frontex' mission is to help
European Union member states implement EU rules on external
border controls and to coordinate cooperation between member states in external border management. While it remains the task of each member state to control its own borders, Frontex is vested to ensure that they all do so with the same high standard of efficiency. The agency's main tasks according to the Council Regulation are:
- coordinate cooperation between member states in external border management.
- assisting member states in training of national border guards.
- carrying out risk analyses.
- following research relevant for the control and surveillance of external borders.
- helping member states requiring technical and operational assistance at external borders.
- providing member states with the necessary support in organising joint return operations.
The institution was centrally and hierarchically organised with a management board, consisting of one person of each member state as well as two members of the commission. The member states representatives are operational heads of national security services concerned with border guard management. Frontex also has representatives from and works closely with
Europol and
Interpol. The Management Board is the leading component of the agency, controlling the personal, financial, and organisational structure, as well as initiating operative tasks in annual work programmes. Additionally, the Board appoints the Executive Director. The first Director was
Ilkka Laitinen.
According to its third amended Budget 2015, the agency had in that year 336 employees. Additionally, the agency could make use of 78 employees which had been seconded from the member states. The dependency of the organisation on staff secondments has been identified by external auditors as a risk, since valuable experience may be lost when such staff leave the organisation and return to their permanent jobs.
Special European Border Forces of rapidly deployable border guards, called
Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABIT) who are armed and patrol cross-country land borders, were created by EU
interior ministers in April 2007 to assist in border control, particularly on Europe's
southern coastlines. Frontex's European Patron Network began work in the
Canary Islands in May 2007 and armed border force officers were deployed to the Greece–Turkey border in October 2010.
