Today, the Frontex Consultative Forum on Fundamental Rights published its 12th annual report. The report outlines the main observations and recommendations that the Forum shared throughout 2024 with Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, and its Management Board to strengthen fundamental rights protection in Frontex activities.
Throughout 2024, the Consultative Forum played a pivotal role in enhancing the integration of fundamental rights into Frontex's operational and training frameworks. The Forum visited operations in Cyprus, Albania, Greece, the Republic of North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Serbia and actively contributed to the identification of vulnerabilities within Frontex VEGA operations. Cooperation between the Forum and Frontex increased and resulted in the refining of Frontex strategies, guidelines and manuals towards fundamental rights compliance.
However, the Consultative Forum calls for the full integration of fundamental rights-safeguards and mitigating measures into the operational plans in agreement with the Member States. The Consultative Forum acknowledges the efforts of the Agency in establishing a Fundamental Rights Compliance Board. In 2025, it will be important to observe to what extent Frontex follows the Consultative Forum’s and the Fundamental Rights Officer’s advice and what means it uses to monitor the implementation of safeguards, introduces thresholds and progressively conditions its support to the Member States.
The Executive Director of Frontex, Hans Leijtens, engaged constructively with the Consultative Forum and made efforts to increase transparency concerning Frontex’s activities. From its end, the Consultative Forum appreciated Frontex’s openness to receive the Forum’s advice. While acknowledging these efforts, the Consultative Forums remains seriously concerned about continuous allegations of violations of fundamental rights being reported in different countries, coupled with lack of independent monitoring and insufficient investigations into the incidents in the Member States. As recent judgements from European Human Rights bodies indicate, fundamental rights enshrined in the EU legislation are still too often challenged by questionable practices and lack of remedial actions.
The publication of the Annual Report 2024 underscores the Forum's commitment to transparency, accountability, and the promotion of fundamental rights within Europe's border management landscape. The Forum looks forward to further advising Frontex in pursuit of a fair, humane, and rights-respecting approach to border management that promotes accountability and upholds the highest standards of fundamental rights across all operational contexts.
The full report is available here.