Summary of the paper Policing the EU’s external borders: A challenge for the rule of la wand fundamental rights in the the area of freedom, security and justice? An analysis of Frontex Joint Operation at the Southern Maritime Border.

By: Fazil Aulia

(quelle: taz.de)

This summary focuses on the problematic operations of the relatively new formed multi-national, inter actor border policing agencies such as Frontex.

As Europe is moving towards multi-level governance, there is a shift of sovereignty beyond traditional definition of sovereignty (state). The shift creates a transnational border policing that is not restricted to traditional police actors. The European integration also diminish the traditional meaning of border which defines the limit of the area of jurisdiction a state can force, making internal borders within the EU and between the member states meaningless while making the external border meaningful for border policing. To exercise that, the EU has been forming agencies specialized in asserting necessary power entitled to them to put border policing into action, such as Frontex.

But given the sheer jurisdictional power, Frontex’s responsibilities often go beyond ist limits and crosses the member states responsibility in policing their own borders. While the main mission of Frontex is to provide assistance to member states authorities in policing the border, Frontex officers are often found to be involved in many border policing operations. Joint operations at seas south of european external border reveal a serious breach of the role and mission of Frontex itself as members of Frontex also took part in conducting operations without clear legal framework and conducted operations well outside ist operational area.

Moreover, the push-back policy that Italy has been implementing at seas has become a basis for questions at humanitarian level as to whether the human rights are well respected in countries where the people affected by the push-back policy are being turned into, such as Libya.

In correlation to the possibility that Frontex has violated its own framework as summarized in the first paragraph, Frontex has also committed interdiction and divertion at seas. While such actions are common for policies such as italian push-back policy to work, one can not easily forget that Frontex is frequently operating outside EU’s territory which mean Frontex was operating in international waters which makes it subject to international laws like the international refugee law that strongly opposes refoulement for people seeking international protection. If interdiction and diversion constitute refoulement, it means that Frontex has also violated international laws and again has been operating without clear legal framework because the Schengen code does not strictly limit Frontex's operational area.

To put it simple, with such operations EU and its members states through border policing agencies such as Frontex pose a threat to some elements of human rights (security, freedom of movement), which is supposedly to be respected by the EU and also disrespect the rule of law by overlapping limitations and regulations that are imposed to them in conducting joint operations as stated in previous paragraphs.