Frontex | Strategic analysis

Frontex collates information from different sources including:

border authorities of Member States and non-EU countries,
EU partners (such as the European Commission, Europol and Eurostat),
international organisations,
open source data (academic papers, studies and the media).

Having collated available data Frontex builds up a picture of the situation, patterns and trends in irregular migration and cross-border criminal activities at the external borders, including trafficking in human beings.

Once an area of weakness at the external border has been identified, a proposal for a joint operation or other activity may be issued. This is followed by detailed planning in close cooperation with those Member States and Schengen-Associated Countries that are invited to participate. This collaboration and sharing of operational know-how and experience continues throughout the operation. The results of post-operative evaluation are later fed back into the system to make it self-evolving and informed of the latest situation in irregular migration and cross-border crime.

To this end, Frontex has established a community called the Frontex Risk Analysis Network (FRAN) that links the intelligence networks of individual European countries with pan-European organisation. This provides the framework for sharing knowledge and producing analytical and strategic reports on the current state of play at the external borders as well as for the production of the Semi-Annual and Annual Risk Analysis documents and other, tailored, risk-analysis products.

It is a Frontex goal to see intelligence-sharing communities develop further afield, particularly in countries of origin and transit for irregular migration, with a view to creating a more widespread intelligence community for mutually beneficial information exchange. The intention is to provide such countries with the opportunity and knowledge to share information, with an emphasis on making training available in intelligence and analysis methodologies.

With this in mind, Frontex builds regional intelligence-sharing communities similar to FRAN with non-EU countries and has established the Western Balkans Risk Analysis Network (WB RAN) and Eastern Borders Risk Analysis Network (EB RAN), which are compatible with EU systems, in addition to promoting an intelligence-sharing network among partner countries in Africa.