Currently, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) boasts just under 1,400 staff and aims to reach a 10,000 standing corps by 2027. Under Article 6 of the EU Regulations, Frontex is accountable to the European Parliament and to the European Council.

Since 2016, Frontex has been allowed to procure its own equipment. In 2019, the border force awarded a contract of €1.5m to Hawkeye360, a US-based firm with strong ties to the military industrial complex.

The contract specifically requested the ability to provide Frontex with “geo-located spaceborne radio frequency emitter detection data for specified electronic equipment”--satellite phone tracking. It is believed that this technology allows Frontex to intercept calls and identify the sender.

A €41m contract for “European inter-operability standards for collaborative air combat” closed 9 December 2021 to an unknown bidder. It is believed the technology will be adapted for Frontex planes and drones as well as bolstering the EU’s defence integration with NATO.

Frontex started a fleet of private charter planes in 2017. In May of this year, Frontex added high-flying drones to its aircraft fleet.

Luxembourg’s world-renowned satellite company SES indirectly helps Frontex through a third-party UK-based company, DEA Aviation, who specialise in “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance” (ISR) missions.

“We provide moving images, video images ideally in real time, and we do that through our satellite links, which SES provide… Support from SES is critical,” said John Sullivan, head of operations for DEA Aviation, in a video on the firm’s website.

, which will provide over ten times the connectivity that their customers currently have, “bringing greater flexibility, performance and scale to enhance ISR missions.”

In 2019, MEPs and EU ministers agreed on reforming the EU agency, “providing more support and strengthening cooperation with non-EU countries.”

A year later, however, Privacy International, a UK-based charity, found alarming trends that EU bodies were “equipping and training authorities, influencing laws, and developing mass-scale biometric databases in non-member countries” and providing “digital tools of surveillance” that could be used to “crush political and civil freedoms and undermine democracy.”

The report mentioned Frontex by name and how the tools they divulge to other countries are being used to enhance political control by tracking and surveilling populations, activists, journalists and opposition movements.

Migrant pushback in Croatia

Over the last few years, Frontex has quietly gone about its business of protecting the EU’s borders from illegal crossings.

Last year, according to their own press release, the border force expelled with the help of the relevant national authorities over 12,000 people from the EU, mostly refugees and asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq who were deemed not to have legal status to remain by the member state in question.

However, their method and handling of people labelled as “illegal” has sometimes been brought into question. In 2018, the UNHCR and Council of Europe criticised Croatia’s draconian measures of stopping migrant and refugees from entering the country, but the reaction of EU institutions was less unequivocal.

In December 2018, Frontex was deployed to the Croatian-Bosnian border by the European Commission, “in response to the pressure of migrants travelling westwards”. They instructed local authorities on how to use technical equipment for land border surveillance, radio communication and techniques for searching people and vehicles.

A member of the Croatian parliament from the ruling Croatian Democratic Union, Tomislav Sokol, expressed the paradox of his country’s situation: “One of the EU goals is to protect its borders. This is also a requirement for Croatia’s entry into the Schengen zone. I don’t see anyone from the EU criticising Croatia or suggesting that it has engaged in illegal activities.”

As reports of human rights violations and abuse mounted, the European Union continued to allocate significant funds to assist Croatia in improving its border security. An additional assistance of €6.8m was sent for the “strengthening of [Croatia’s] border management at the EU’s external border” bringing the overall emergency funding to strengthen border surveillance and management allocated to Croatia to over €23m. The funds were meant to cover the costs of ten border police stations.

This assistance comes on top of nearly €108m allocated to Croatia under the Asylum Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) and Internal Security Fund for 2014 -2020. In comparison just over €17,000 was allocated for integration activities.

“The additional emergency funding to enhance border security comes despite credible evidence indicating that the beneficiaries of the funds have engaged in increasingly repressive measures in violation of international and EU law and standards,” according to a 2019 Amnesty International Report on violence and abuse against refugees and migrants along the Balkan route.

In December 2021, the European Commission stated Croatia had passed the criteria for acceptance into the Schengen zone.

The situation in the East

A Frontex press release from this month details how the number of illegal border crossings on its Eastern land border, between Poland and Lithuania, from Belarus has increased 1,099% from the same time last year.

For the first time, in what was labelled “a historic step for the standing corps and the European Union,” by Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri, Frontex standing corps officers will be equipped with service weapons provided by Lithuania.

Finland has also followed suit and equipped Frontex personnel with firearms. This comes at a time of rising tension between Belarus, which is a Russian ally, and the EU. There has been accusation from both sides of “weaponising” migrants, and even of the defouling and dumping of dead bodies across borders.

Meanwhile, the foreign minister for Lithuania this month in an address to Brussels has claimed Russia “is really gearing up for war” and that “I still have the feeling that we’re not taking this seriously enough”.

Around 100,000 military units, including tanks, artillery and drones are amassing on the Ukrainian border. NATO and the G7 have warned of large scale economic and strategic consequences should Russia not back down.

Meanwhile, Russia wants NATO to rescind a 2008 commitment to allow Ukraine and Georgia to join its military alliance, which it sees as a direct threat to its sovereignty.