Today Fabrice Leggeri started his five-year term as the Frontex Executive Director.
The top post at Frontex is a home coming of sort for Leggeri, who as a national expert detached to the European Commission took active part in drafting an EU document that was endorsed in 2002, paving the way to the creation of the agency now headquartered in Warsaw. Since then, he has been engaged in various dimensions of border and immigration policies and has a long standing involvement and familiarity with Frontex, its operations, activities and management.
Fabrice Leggeri has more than two decades of experience as a civil servant, most recently at the French Ministry of Interior, where he was in charge of EU and Schengen related issues such as management of external borders, visa policies and migration management. He has also worked at the French Ministry of Defence, the French embassy in South Korea, as well as a representative of the central government at the local level in two regions.
Leggeri hopes to take advantage of his wide expertise in his new role at Frontex, where he will need to cooperate with border guards around Europe as well as national and EU officials.
“I see Frontex promoting a common working culture and the feeling that all border guards belong to the same community of values managing the external borders of the Schengen free movement area,” Leggeri said.
Facing challenges such as the thousands of people crossing the EU’s sea borders every month, Leggeri said Frontex must not neglect the land borders and airports.
“Frontex will also have to strike the balance between short term joint operations in emergency cases, and long term investments in capacity building,” he added. “Fundamental Rights must always be anchored in Frontex missions, the training of European border guards and any cooperation with non-EU states.”
In the coming weeks, the new Frontex Executive Director plans to visit various Frontex operations to get acquainted with the day to day challenges faced by border guards in the field.
Fabrice Leggeri is the agency’s second Executive Director following the resignation of Ilkka Laitinen last year.
Gil Arias, who served as the Executive Director ad interim, will remain Leggeri’s deputy.