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Frontex contributions ‘should be compulsory’

Commission proposal would allow Frontex to purchase or lease its own assets.

Member states’ contributions of officials and boats to Frontex, the European Union’s border management agency, would become compulsory under a proposal made by the European Commission yesterday (24 February). 

The proposal would also allow Frontex, which co-ordinates member states’ operations against illegal migration, to purchase or lease its own assets. Currently, Frontex relies on voluntary contributions of personnel, boats and surveillance aircraft from member states.

Cecilia Malmström, European commissioner for home affairs, said that she would not seek additional funds for Frontex under this year’s budget, but that the agency would become more efficient if member states’ assets contributions were to be made available more predictably.

The EU’s home affairs ministers are to discuss the Commission’s draft directive on Frontex in Brussels today (25 February) and hear a presentation of the agency’s work programme for 2010. The meeting will approve an internal security strategy for the EU. Ministers will also decide to establish a standing committee on operational co-operation on internal security, whose main role is to co-ordinate police, customs and judicial co-operation between member states, including work on border protection.

Level of involvement

Under Malmström’s proposal, Frontex would signal to member states a year in advance what operations it was planning and what kind of equipment and personnel it would need to carry them out. It would then be up to each member state to determine the level of its contribution.

Once such a pledge were made, however, it would become a binding commitment, and the Commission would have the right of redress against member states that reneged on their pledges.

Frontex was set up in 2005 and is based in Warsaw. Its budget has grown from €19 million in 2006 – its first full year of operations – to €88m in 2009.

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