Frontex chief Hans Leijtens vows to change organisation’s culture within three years

euronews (in English)

Executive Director of Frontex says he wishes Greece would comply with its international obligations when it comes to ensuring the safety of vulnerable refugees and migrants making their way to Europe often on non-seaworthy vessels.

Transcript

00:00Welcome to the Europe conversation where this week my guest is executive director of Frontex

00:13Hans Leitens. He says he wants to change the culture of the organization where saving lives

00:18at sea is a key priority. He also says if he had his way no migrants would be returned to Libya

00:25where they often face serious human rights abuses. Hans Leitens, executive director of Frontex.

00:32Thank you very much for joining us on the Europe conversation. You're welcome. So Frontex is 20

00:37years coming up to this year. It was obviously created to protect the border of the European

00:42Union but it's growing. I mean politically speaking Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the

00:46commission would like to increase the staff to around 30,000 from where we are now which is in

00:52around 3,000 staff. It started actually even less ambitious than that. It started with being more

00:58of an information hub, a coordination mechanism and it was only in 2019 when our mandate became

01:05executive. Right now we are still in the build-up so in 27 we should have 10,000 to be deployed in

01:102028. One of the things that does obviously come into your mind when you think of Frontex's pushbacks

01:16where we've seen certain coast guards in particular Greece has been accused of this many times. Obviously

01:21Greece is a country that has been very much heavily on the front line when it comes to migration for

01:25at least the past decade. But that people are being pushed back away from the coastline, deep into

01:32the sea on unseaworthy vessels where often they die. I mean we had the case of the Adriana where 600

01:39people died and you see all those images of little children spread around the coastline dead.

01:45Can you tell us about that because Frontex does come under a lot of criticism for it not taking enough of its

01:51responsibility there? Well to start with I think every single casualty hurts. Hurts of course the

01:56families but also hurts us because when we took up our job we promised to serve and protect. So we're

02:02not sort of the enemy, they're not our opponents. Migration is a fact of life and we have to deal

02:07with it, we have to manage it. So that's to start with. Then secondly I think it's important that

02:12we support the member states. Indeed we see and we also observe ourselves that sometimes there are

02:20incidents. They're reported by us, they're investigated by the Fundamental Rights Office in most cases but

02:27also the follow-up of these incidents are with the member states. I have to work with the sort of the

02:33fact that there is a rule of law that's functioning because it's the commission who needs to make sure

02:37that every member state has a rule of law that functions. Emily O'Reilly, the former EU

02:41Ombudsman was very critical of Frontex or at least asked the question, is it responsible for saving

02:48lives at sea? Because actually you're taking the European Union, the commission, into this if you

02:52advocate your responsibility and the Adriana was one case in point. This happens all the time.

02:56Difficult thing is, so to start with we are not a search and rescue agency as such. What we do is in the course of our

03:04mandate, meaning protecting borders, if we run into something that might be a case where a ship is in distress,

03:11for example, we play our role in alarming the responsive and responsible member state or third

03:18country, depending on where it happens. That's what we did in the other case. Actually I was myself in a

03:23monitoring room when we first spotted the ship. So I saw it myself the day before it went down, which is a

03:30terrible incident by the way, let me be absolutely clear about that. What we can do,

03:34then, is when we had a plane, we can inform, in this case, the Greek authorities about what we see.

03:40We cannot coordinate.

03:41Okay, well 600 people died and it was pretty obvious that they were probably going to come

03:46into distress. I mean obviously you did your duty and you complied, but is there something more you

03:50could have done to ensure that those lives were not ended the way they were?

03:55I can tell you what I would like to have done knowing what I know right now, but the question is,

04:00what did we know back then? And back then we had one drone flying, one plane flying,

04:05and we were instructed to go to another incident south of Crete. That was a real incident. So we had to

04:11move on because the overview of that incident was with the Greek authorities. So then we move on to

04:17a next incident where 80 people on board of also a ship in distress. So, okay, if I would have known

04:24before what would have happened, then I would have, I mean we proposed to the Greek authorities to send

04:31another plane twice. We have been already clear about that from the day after the incident that we

04:36proposed this to the Greek and both times it was ignored by the Greek authorities. That's their decisions then.

04:41Because I think this is a very important point. And I know that your own fundamental rights officer,

04:45Jonas Grimheden, has complained about the Greek authorities. There are many investigations

04:51regarding Greece and this illegal pushbacks where migrants are pushed away and often obviously suffer.

04:59I'm happy to focus on Greece, but let's first start with cooperating with 27 member states and a number of

05:04first countries. So the volume of things we do is much bigger than only in Greece. I would like in Greece to

05:11happen what I would like to happen every country with who you cooperate, that they comply with the

05:15rules and that if there is an incident and that can happen, that it is duly investigated, that it has

05:22consequences. There's also the investigation into the Syrian family of four who went to Greece, applied

05:27for asylum legally. Before their asylum process had been completed, they were forcibly put onto a plane.

05:32They ended up in Iraq. Of course, they couldn't go back to Syria. One of their complaints is that the

05:37Frontex guards or the guards there separated the parents from their children. They're trying to

05:41make Frontex accountable when it comes to human rights. The question actually is not so much about

05:46what we did, but about our responsibility. And that is, the question is, okay, should we rely

05:53on the decision as it is presented to us by, in this case, the Greek authorities, in case we have,

05:59let's say, a part of a chain of activities, in this case, a return activity. And our position has been

06:08in the past that we cannot, because it's a national responsibility to make a decision and also to make

06:14sure that it's done in a proper way. What we do right now is we check, let's say, the step before us,

06:22and that's as far we can go. But if the judge would decide that we are fully responsible for the whole

06:28chain of events, that would make our life very difficult. But again, that's a fact of life then,

06:32and then we have to adjust our way of working to that. In the past, Frontex has said that NGOs

06:38saving people at sea are a pull factor from migration. Do you believe that that is the case?

06:42Well, you never heard me say that. Actually, I sit in the Italian Senate the opposite. I have no proof.

06:50Actually, there is scientific proof that it's not the case. So there have been academia looking at the

06:56topic and they proved with duly investigative studies that there's no proof that it is. And

07:05I have no proof of that either. So for me, NGOs are part of the ecosystem. I'm in touch with them. We

07:12speak. We try to understand each other's positions. We try to make sure that we don't

07:18sort of block each other's, because we all see the need to save lives at sea, for example.

07:23But you see Frontex as a role in saving lives at sea. That's what you also believe.

07:27Yeah, sure. We are, yeah.

07:28Because we know that Frontex obviously uses drones and planes to spot ships

07:33coming in, and often they're brought back to places like Libya, where people, and we've seen the

07:39long-standing reporting of this, people often face torture, arbitrary arrest. Can Frontex stand over

07:45that when they know that the repercussions for those people is so grave?

07:48Let me be very clear. I wish there would be no one returned to Libya, because I fully agree with

07:53what you just stated. That we have a professional dilemma, actually. Let me just give you an example.

08:00First of all, the Mediterranean is divided in search and rescue zones. And it's not our invention,

08:06it's UN law who sort of says, okay, who's responsible where. We do patrolling, what we call pre-frontier,

08:14that means that we fly over international waters, but it includes the search and rescue zones of,

08:19indeed, North African countries like Libya. When we spot a ship in distress, there's no doubt in my mind

08:27that the first responsibility we have is to save lives. And if it's really in distress,

08:33we relay a medical on behalf of the ship. And if it's in Libyan territory, it's the Libyans who have

08:38to take the responsibility. And they do. And I've been asked, okay, but why don't you just skip the

08:43Libyans and only inform the NGOs? But that would mean that I would play with human lives. Because if

08:49the NGOs are not available, then there's no coordination, then people might drown. And I

08:54cannot take that responsibility. So as long, as much as I do not like people to be returned to Libya,

08:58if I have to choose, again, I'd rather save lives than not save lives.

09:03Actually, there has been a 38% drop in crossings to the EU, which is actually comparable to

09:10the time during COVID when nobody was actually moving. What do you say is the reason for this?

09:16In this specific case, I think it has to do, we know actually, because we have proof of this,

09:20there were two ways how people moved from Tunisia to Lampedusa, for example. First way was use the

09:27ships like the Ariana, so bigger Egyptian, often fishing vessels, 500-600 people on board.

09:35And the other way was using smaller boats. And these were makeshift metal boats.

09:41They would construct them in 24 hours, they cost about $1,000, and they could take 30 people on board.

09:47The Tunisians stepped up their enforcement there, so they stopped this modus operandi.

09:53And that actually explains right now the decrease.

09:56Because you mentioned Tunisia and Egypt, and obviously we talked about Libya before that,

10:00and the EU has done important deals with those two countries to stem the wave of migration.

10:06But would you be concerned about the human rights in those countries?

10:08I always have my concerns, and I should take them on board, because everything we do has to be assured

10:14by at the same time compliance with fundamental rights and also data protection. At the same time,

10:19UNHCR is doing work in Libya right now. We are not. IOM is supporting the Libyan Coast Guard.

10:25So let's not do as if we are sort of a different species. We have to cooperate.

10:31Just before I let you go, I want to ask you, are you concerned about the rightward

10:34hard-line shift amongst member states when it comes to migration?

10:39Sometimes it's perhaps tempting to sort of assume that you can be effective in border guarding

10:44without complying with fundamental rights. I think this is sort of an illusion. Actually,

10:50it's a false contradiction. I think fundamental rights is actually the basis of how we should do it,

10:55because we are Europe. We agreed to uphold fundamental rights. We put them actually in our charter.

11:01Every country who joined the union signed by the cross to do this.

11:05And do you think that you'll be able to make sure that that is pervasive within the organization of

11:11Frontex, given, as you mentioned, the Frontex before you joined seem to have, let's say,

11:17not as much regard for that? You have to have transparency. And it's not just about the instance.

11:23It's about recruitment. It's about being a fair organization, being a diverse organization,

11:28both in gender, but also in nationalities. So I think it means a lot. And it's actually an

11:34attribute of culture. And as you know, culture is very difficult to change. But I think we're making

11:39steps right now. I think it will take for sure the rest of my mandates, which is another three years,

11:44to really change it. And it's not only depending on me. I think it's depending on all of the leadership of

11:48Frontex. Hans Leitens, Executive Director of Frontex. Thank you very much for joining us under your conversation.

11:54You're welcome.

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