European Parliament scrutiny of Frontex

Regulation (EU) 2019/1896 transformed Frontex into the European Border and Coast Guard Agency and considerably increased its tasks, powers, responsibilities and budget. The regulation extended the agency's tasks and competences while also balancing them with stronger fundamental rights safeguards and increased liability and accountability, including by giving the European Parliament oversight of the agency's activities. As part of this oversight, Parliament endorses the agency's budget, can ask the agency for information, plays a key role in appointing the agency's executive director, and a Parliament expert, on invitation, can attend Frontex management board meetings. All this makes Parliament the key player in terms of democratic oversight of the agency. Yet, the agency has been accused in recent years of failing to comply with some of its own rules and of being involved in pushbacks and violations of fundamental rights by Member States' authorities at the EU's external borders. In 2020, Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) decided to investigate these allegations, using the above range of oversight tools. In January 2021, LIBE established the Frontex Scrutiny Working Group (FSWG) to monitor all aspects of the functioning of the agency, including compliance with fundamental rights, transparency, and accountability towards Parliament. The FSWG did a fact-finding investigation, collected evidence and presented its final report in July 2021. Parliament's scrutiny and pressure led to the agency to take a series of actions to address the identified inefficiencies and the allegations of fundamental rights violations. In April 2022, the Frontex Executive Director, Fabrice Leggeri, resigned with immediate effect. This briefing looks at the Parliament's accountability mechanisms and how they have been used to ensure that migrants' fundamental rights are respected and upheld at the EU's external borders. This is a further update of a briefing published in November 2021 and updated in September 2022.