The European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) returned more irregular migrants in 2023 than ever before. According to an internal report to which EL PAÍS has had access, 39,239 people were expelled that year, an unprecedented number that has been increasing at least since 2015. and that represents 58% more than in 2022. This figure, however, has nuances: the majority of them, around 55%, returned to their countries voluntarily, while the rest did so forcibly. “The sustained and constant increase in the number of returns financed by the agency demonstrates that Member States consider Frontex as an effective and reliable partner in the execution of all types of returns,” the document celebrates. In recent years, the agency has identified the expulsion of migrants without the right to asylum as one of its main tasks in a context of increasing tightening of the EU's migration policy. These lines have been consolidated in the European migration pact that the European Parliament approved on Thursday.
Despite achieving record numbers, Frontex is still far from achieving its goal of becoming one of the most relevant agents in the field of returns: in 2023 all Member States together dictated 430,650 orders to leave the country and only 109,085 people were actually returned, around 25%. If it is taken into account that Frontex carried out another 39,239 returns, this is 36% of the total expulsions; the rest were carried out by the Member States themselves.
The data from the last semester, which is analyzed in depth in the document, indicates that the most active countries were Germany, Cyprus and France. Together they concentrated 60% of all returns in which the agency participated. The fact that Germany tops the return ranking coincides with the country's tightening of laws to speed up expulsions, as is the case with France and its recent new immigration law. Spain, with 506 returns in collaboration with the agency, remains among the least active.
Although this organization has been increasing its return figures since its creation in 2004, it shows caution in its forecasts for the coming semesters, although it suggests that it needs more money. The report maintains that for the increase to be “sustainable”, the involvement of Member States “should be accompanied by a stable growth of the financial resources at the agency's disposal over the years”. Frontex's expenditure to carry out deportations in 2022 was 79 million euros, almost four times more than in 2020. But, in addition, it has a budget of 40 million euros for the period 2023-2027 allocated exclusively to the purchase of aircraft chartered aircraft that allow forced returns to be carried out, according to its 2023 Acquisition Plan.
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One of the signs of Frontex's growth is its progressive deployment of personnel and border control actions. Currently, the agency directs 19 operations inside and outside the borders of the EU to try to supervise the 500 million crossings that the EU registers annually, with more than 2,000 agents deployed, a figure that is intended to expand to 10,000 uniformed personnel. by 2027. Frontex is the European agency that is growing the most, according to its own website, and the increase in its budget allocations attests to this: they have gone from receiving just six million euros in 2005, after its birth, to more than 845 million granted by 2023.
With these figures, Frontex advances in the objective of becoming an essential tool of the EU to return foreigners to their countries of origin. This is a goal framed in the community migration policy that has among its priorities to accelerate and multiply the expulsions of those who do not meet the requirements to stay in community territory due to having their asylum application rejected, for example.
To carry out returns, the agency has specific support and escort units at European airports. Currently, there are 62 active teams in eight locations in six Member States that contributed to the execution of 8,564 expulsions. In the last half of 2023, this division was expanded with more troops at the airfields in Paris and Berlin, and also at the Frontex headquarters in Warsaw, to be assigned to one place or another depending on the needs.
These new data have been collected at a time when the European Parliament has just approved the new Pact on Migration and Asylum, which aims to standardize European legislation on immigration. Its detractors, among them hundreds of NGOs, warn among other things that it will multiply return processes, a forecast that Brussels also has. “I think that during the next term we will see the rate of returns double. We have done a lot [a este respecto] during this mandate and now we are better prepared,” said EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson in Brussels on Tuesday. Silvia Ayuso reports.
Returns by charter flight
The report gives clues as to how the agency proceeds in the area of returns. Of the 45% of the returns that it carried out forcibly in the second half of 2023, around 60% were on charter flights chartered by Frontex. “The use of charter flights is prioritized primarily for safety reasons, for example in higher risk cases where they cannot be easily returned on scheduled flights,” the report reads. Meanwhile, on regular flights those who return voluntarily prevail. “Regular and charter flights increasingly complement each other to ensure the effective return of different profiles of migrants to a growing number of non-EU countries,” the document states.
Both the number of voluntary returns (incentivized through different means) and forced returns increased compared to the previous semester by 28% and 10% respectively. Despite an increase in forced returns over those six months, the number of volunteers showed much more rapid growth and continued to outnumber those returned by force.
The agency participates in returns when required by Member States. It first evaluates the request based on its cost and effectiveness, security issues, operating conditions, respect for fundamental rights and decides whether to accept or reject the request, or if it proposes alternatives. Member States, in any case, maintain their power to organize their own flights without the need for Frontex to participate.
In his explanation of these effectiveness criteria, one fact draws attention: in the second half of 2023 there were four charter flights on which fewer than 10 returnees were traveling, an anecdotal number for the cost involved. Frontex, however, justifies that they have been carried out by “prioritizing the return of criminals who pose a threat to national and EU security” or to “stimulate cooperation with certain destination countries” so that in the future accept flights with a greater number of returnees. Two keys in the EU return policy.
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