The Frontex Files

February 7, 2021 8:15 AM

The Frontex Files documents how Frontex, the rapidly-growing EU border and coast guard agency, has been working closely with the weapons industry to equip Frontex with firearms and controversial technologies such as biometrics (including facial recognition) and drones, all in an effort to "push back" migrants away from Europe.

Some additional context for US or Anglo-centric readers: ZDF Magazin Royale is a comedic German news show roughly in the vein of Last Week Tonight, with each episode typically featuring a deep dive on an important subject such as racism in the German police or Volkswagen's history of using forced labor. The video at the top of the Frontex Files page has English subtitles.

posted by jedicus (14 comments total)

That was an interesting video about a subject I was only broadly aware of, thank you for posting.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:17 AM on February 7, 2021

I was all set to make a crack about "Fortress Europa 2.0", but then I went to the Wikipedia article about it, and:

For conservative parties such as the Freedom Party of Austria, 'Fortress Europe' is a positive term. They mostly claim that such a fortress does not really exist yet, and that illegal immigrants can enter Europe far too easily. They often charge the southern states with insufficient border control, claiming that the latter are acting on the knowledge that immigrants tend to be more attracted to western/northern states with more generous welfare systems (Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Sweden etc.). Conservatives all over Europe want to end the Schengen Agreement and to re-install border controls because they say it leads to mass migration of illegals and also free traffic of criminals. Changes in the Schengen treaties have come into effect in the wake of this criticism.

See also: Frontex

So.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:32 AM on February 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

In 2015, a miserly ~1.5 million refugees almost caused the collapse of the EU's political system - especially germany. This is in a continent with ~450 million residents.

Frontex as configured is not the answer. I don't know what is.

If anyone glibly says "open borders to europe", there are genuine capital-F fascists (not the small f that we have now) waiting in the wings of virtually every country in Europe, many of whom who had a good chance of winning power if 2015 repeated. This was before the coronavirus economic crash and brexit; anti immigrant sentiment is absolutely worse than then.

Migrant flows (and structural inequalities more generally) in an era of pandemics and global warming are a moral crisis for the world - and have been getting worse for decades.

They are also an absolute existential crisis for democracies, and any hope of international collaboration to other existential crises......Countries that are fighting each other over immigration won't be making emissions-reducing/green energy pacts, dealing with capitalism's race to the bottom with regulation, or dealing with the biosphere's poisoning.
posted by lalochezia at 9:36 AM on February 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

lalochezia: "If anyone glibly says "open borders to europe""

Can I say it unglibly, then? "Europe" is on a demographic decline that will only be mitigated by opening up to immigrants. Yes there are facists (both f- and F-) around, and immigration is one of their hobbyhorses. Sorry, but I'm not going to stop being pro-immigration and pro-open borders just because some fascists think it's a bad idea. And I'm glad to live in an EU country (with plenty of fascists and the occasional Facist and plenty of nostalgics for fascism) that said fuck that noise when Covid hit.
posted by chavenet at 10:03 AM on February 7, 2021 [15 favorites]

chavenet hi from the UK, where we daily demonstrate what happens when anti-immigrant sentiment is 100% catered for and the arguments in favour of immigration just... aren't made in public life. By anyone. Thank you for saying that.
posted by altolinguistic at 10:17 AM on February 7, 2021 [8 favorites]

FWIW I'm all for immigration FYI at a much greater rate than is "permitted" now.

I also think uncontrolled admission of refugees&immigrants will lead to fascism (there are MANY more refugees & immigrants that want to be in Europe than 2015's tiny wave ripple), and I'd like to find ways to forstall fascism so we can get society ready for the changes that are coming.

And I am aware of the overton window wrt making requests for more than you want....
posted by lalochezia at 10:25 AM on February 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm a huge Jan Böhmermann fanboy.

What we're seeing now for migrants and refugees may just be a trickle compared to the flood that global warming could unleash. Disengagement from the world will not make the problem go away.
posted by Slothrup at 11:52 AM on February 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

Let's the European Christian democrats enact fascist policies (without a capital f) because the Fascists may eventually take power?

To your point, this sounds like Hungarian politics for the last several years.
posted by gimonca at 1:05 PM on February 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

Comparing refugees to quantities of water is really dehumanising, can we not?
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 1:12 PM on February 7, 2021

Mod note: Hi folks this is just a reminder that this is a thread about immigration and migration into Europe. Totally ok to have US commenters but maybe try to keep it focused on what's going on there or bringing your comments back to the topic at hand. thank you.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:11 PM on February 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

There is still an infrastructure that provides a very high standard of living for 450 million people within the EU, so I don't think we actually need to take the promise of it being over-run that seriously. We do need to talk constructively about everything that's wrong with Frontex, and about how we could use models such as the still applicable (including in the UK, because the xenophobes here never noticed) 1963 Ankara Agreement to have a managed way to allow safer, less all-or-nothing migration from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean into Europe, and to allow better and easier trade with those countries.
posted by ambrosen at 3:12 PM on February 7, 2021

Conservatives all over Europe want to end the Schengen Agreement and to re-install border controls

Introducing intra-EU border checks and entry visas is a fringe/extremist position. It's not something with widespread consensus anywhere in the EU, as this Wikipedia entry implies. Perhaps in one former (non-Schengen) EU member was this a popular idea amongst conservatives.

Securing the external EU border does elicit widespread support, however.
posted by romanb at 9:51 PM on February 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

It sucks, because in my tiny corner of Europe the current plan is to bring in Frontex for a few years in order to 'secure' our border with the EU and give us access to Schengen.
Removing the border is really controversial, but Frontex is seen as a neutral third party compared to our neighbour's civil guard.

Thanks for the link!
posted by Braeburn at 11:36 PM on February 7, 2021

From The Economist, Jan 30, a review of 2 books on the subject of immigration: Two books debunk common fears about immigration
posted by chavenet at 11:44 AM on February 8, 2021