Topic: Frontex

Rapid reactions in Greece

European history was made on Thursday as the EU Rapid Border Intervention Team (RABIT) was deployed for the first time every in its history. The team, one of several operated by Frontex, the European Border Management Agency, created in 2007, was deployed on the request of the Greek government in order to help to stop the increasingly high numbers of irregular immigrants crossing into Greece–and the EU–from Turkey. (Reports by EU Observer and European Voice). As Frontex Exective Director said, ‘Frontex stands ready to assist Greece by activating the RABIT mechanism in this urgent and exceptional situation’ (Frontex announcement).

The move seems in part provoked by the release of a UN report only a few days before describing the conditions of undocumented detainees in Greece as ‘catastrophic’ and documenting episodes of torture and ill-treatment by police.

According to Frontex, more than three-quarters of the 40,977 people intercepted while trying to enter into without proper documents into the EU in the first half of 2010 entered across the Greece-Turkey border. [ More… ]

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Happy Birthday FRONTEX!

This week here in Warsaw, FRONTEX, the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union, celebrates its 5th birthday with a series of high-visibility conferences and events.

The events revolve around the solemn proclamation of today, 25 May, as the European Day for Border Guards. The day’s star-studded program includes no less than Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, Interior Minister of Spain, Cecilia Malmström, Commission for Home Affairs, Juan Lopez Aguilar, Chairman of the Committe on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, Ilkka Laitinen, Executive Director of Frontex and Baroness Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. [ More… ]

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