Frontex | Return

Third-country nationals who have exhausted all legal avenues to legitimise their stay in the EU, or have committed offences in the EU, are served with a return decision instructing them to return to their countries of origin.

According to Eurostat, almost 250,000 people are subject to such orders every year. The vast majority of them leave voluntarily. However, when illegally-staying migrants refuse to comply, they may be forcibly returned as a last resort. Return operations hence are organised by migration authorities for persons who are subject to individual return decisions taken by a court or competent administrative body in an EU Member State.

Joint Return Operation

One of Frontex's tasks stipulated in the founding regulation is to provide Member States with the necessary support, including, upon request, coordination or organisation of joint return operations.

Frontex-coordinated returns by air group together non-EU nationals from several Member States for a flight. Returnees are transported from several Member States to the Member State organising the flight, where they embark an aircraft and travel together to the destination airport in a third country.

Frontex acts as an intermediary, coordinating with the various national authorities that want to participate in a joint return flight. However, Frontex does not have any background information about the individual cases of the returnees. Personal data processed by the agency is strictly limited to those personal data which are required for the purpose of a joint return operation and is deleted no later than 10 days after the end of the operation.

Procedure

One of the EU Member States or Schengen Associated Countries takes the initiative to organise a joint return flight to a specific destination country and charters a plane for that purpose. The countries of destination are chosen according to needs — the presence of irregular immigrants of a given nationality who have received return decisions — and conditions applied by the destination country, such as readmission agreements.

The organising Member State informs Frontex of the planned flight and the number of seats available for other participants. Frontex dispatches this information to other Member States. Member States that wish to participate contact Frontex. In some cases, the organising Member State sends an advance party to the destination country several days prior to departure. The advance party’s task is to meet with local authorities, provide information about the returnees and agree details of disembarkation and processing upon arrival.
The returnees, accompanied by escorts (security personnel responsible for escorting), travel from participating Member States to the organising Member State where they board the plane to the final destination. The organising country prepares and oversees the flight in line with a best practices manual developed by Frontex and also ensures the presence of medical personnel on board every joint return flight. In addition, each Member State is legally obliged to have a monitoring system in place to ensure compliance with the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights.
A Frontex project manager always travels on the charter flight to the destination country. His tasks include making sure that the joint return operation is carried out in accordance with the Code of Conduct for return flights created by Frontex.
The returnees disembark in the destination country and the organisers and escorts return on the same charter flight.

Financing

Joint Return Operations are co-financed by Frontex. Usually the costs fully or partially covered by Frontex include the cost of chartering the plane, the travel costs of escorts and returnees from participating Member States and the costs of medical personnel, human rights monitor and catering provided before departure.

The costs covered by Frontex may vary as other sources of financing can also be used for return flights, for example the European Return Fund.