Berndt Körner was appointed Frontex’s Deputy Executive Director by the agency’s Management Board today, replacing Gil Arias-Fernández, who is leaving Frontex after serving a decade at the position.
“I am looking forward to working with Berndt. He is a sound expert in border management who fully understands the challenges ahead of Frontex and the European Union. He has an extensive operational background, long experience with EU institutions and recognised management skills,” said Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri. “I would also like to thank Gil who played a crucial role in the development of this agency almost since its very beginning.”
During its 56th meeting at the Warsaw headquarters of Frontex, the Management Board also appointed its current Deputy Chairman Marko Gasperlin of Slovenia as its new Chairman. He replaces Ralf Göbel of Germany, who has held the position since April 2012 and will now take the post of Deputy Chairman.
Mr. Körner is expected to take his position of the Deputy Executive Director in January.
He graduated in Law at the University in Graz he started his professional career in 1991 as a civil servant working in the Aliens Department in a district in the province of Burgenland. In 1996 he joined the Ministry of the Interior, where he was then in the team for the preparation of Austria’s accession to Schengen. There, he worked with neighbouring countries on the improvement of border control at the common border leading to the opening of new border crossing points and also to concluding of new bilateral agreements facilitating cross border movements.
He was among the members of the Austrian delegation to the Schengen Working Group “Borders” and later on also the EU Working Groups “Borders” and “Schengen evaluation”. Mr. Körner chaired both groups during the Austrian EU Presidency in 2006.
He served as the Head of Department at the Ministry of the Interior and then joined the Council of the EU in 2010, where he worked until 2013 as a seconded national expert for Schengen evaluation and cooperated closely with Frontex. Since then he has served as a long-term expert on Integrated Border Management at PAMECA IV, an EU funded technical assistance project, which assists key Albanian law enforcement agencies in the JHA sector by offering expertise drawn from EU Member States.