FRONTEX FILES

Glock, Airbus, Heckler & Koch. From 2017 to 2019, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency held 16 meetings with lobbyists – and the list of participants reads like a Who’s Who of the weapons industry. Handgun catalogs were passed around, and the virtues of surveillance drones were detailed in eye-catching PowerPoint presentations.

No external observers were in attendance, and Frontex hasn’t let the public know what was discussed at these meetings. Members of the European Parliament asked Frontex two years ago to publish a lobbying transparency register, but that still hasn’t happened. This was the agency’s response to a ZDF Magazin Royale inquiry in January:

»Frontex does not meet with lobbyists.«

Since Frontex is not living up to its responsibilities as an EU agency, ZDF Magazin Royale is lending a hand. We hereby present the FRONTEX FILES, the first lobbying transparency register of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency.

ZDF Magazin Royale worked with researchers Luisa Izuzquiza, Margarida Silva and Myriam Douo, along with the NGO “Frag den Staat” (Ask the State), to analyze 142 documents from 16 meetings held by Frontex with industry representatives between 2017 and 2019. The documents include programs, PowerPoint presentations and product catalogs. 

We requested them under the EU’s freedom of information law. 

On its website, Frontex includes only partial information about invitations to these meetings. It doesn’t reveal who was invited or what was presented. 

In response to a question from an MEP in 2018, Frontex said they would only meet with lobbyists registered in the EU's transparency register and publish an annual overview of meetings on its website. According to Frontex there had been no such meetings in 2017.

That’s not true. Frontex held four meetings with lobbyists in 2017. Fifty-eight percent of them were not listed in the transparency register. Seventy-two percent (91 out of 125) of the lobbyists at the 2018 and 2019 meetings were not registered.

In response to an inquiry from ZDF Magazin Royale, Frontex writes:

»Frontex does not meet with lobbyists. We invite company representatives to our ‘industry days,’ which are an opportunity for border officials to learn more about new technologies and innovations in the realm of border protection.«

That’s also not true. An analysis of the presentations and catalogs shows that companies have been attempting to influence the agency’s policies. Some of their suggestions have already been put into practice. 

138 representatives of private entities attended these meetings, including 108 company representatives, 10 think tanks, 15 universities, and one nongovernmental organization.
Not a single representative of a human rights organization was in attendance.

Frontex invited not only representatives of EU border control agencies to these meetings, but also international organizations such as Interpol, Europol and the OSCE, as well as representatives from countries known for their brutal border control policies: the Australian government, the U.S. Homeland Security Department, the Angolan Interior Ministry, the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs of the United Arab Emirates, and the Belarusian border protection agency.

Various types of equipment for defending the EU’s external borders were presented at these –sometimes topic-specific – meetings. Products included handguns, munitions, surveillance equipment such as sensors, drones and cameras, and servers for storing biometric information. They were introduced in PowerPoint presentations.

A new regulation passed by the European Parliament in the spring of 2019 stipulates that Frontex is to have a “standing corps” of 10,000 by 2027, and it is allowed to equip border agents with handguns.

The problem is that no legal regulations permit members of an EU agency to carry firearms.

One of the most frequent topics at the meetings focused on the collection, use and storage of biometric information (such as fingerprints, iris and facial recognition information, heart rate), which will eventually make passports unnecessary as a means of identification. The use of facial recognition technologies is very controversial in the EU, and still unregulated. The European Parliament has proposed a moratorium on the use of these technologies.

People seeking to enter the EU through its external borders are portrayed in these documents almost always as a threat, or as objects that have to be “managed.” Given the absence of human rights organizations at the Frontex meetings, as well as still-unanswered allegations of migrant pushback, this is a huge problem.

Why are lobbyists so interested in Frontex? Frontex is the European Union’s fastest-growing agency. When it was established in 2005, its budget was 6 million euros; by 2020, the budget had increased to 460 million. Frontex was been allocated a total of 11 billion euros for the period from 2021 to 2027.

In addition: Since 2019, Frontex has been permitted to own and acquire airplanes, drones and firearms.

There is a significant overlap between the companies that lobby Frontex directly and those that have won contracts related to securing the EU’s external borders.

Here:

Researchers Luisa Izuzquiza, Margarida Silva, and Myriam Douo have published an extensive report about the documents, which has been published by Corporate Europe Observatory. To access the report, click here.