EUROPEAN AGENCY FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF OPERATIONAL COOPERATION AT THE EXTERNAL BORDERS (FRONTEX)

FRONTEX is the agency of the European Union  that manages the cooperation between national border guards that is undertaken to secure the external borders of the union, including from illegal immigration, human trafficking and terrorist infiltration. The agency was established in 2004 and has its seat in Warsaw, Poland.

Responsibilities

FRONTEX's mission is to help EU Member States implement EU rules on external border controls and to coordinate operational cooperation between Member States in the field of external border management. While it remains the task of each Member State to control its own borders, the Agency is vested with the function to ensure that they all do so with the same high standard of efficiency. The agency's main tasks are:

• The Coordination of operational cooperation between Member States regarding the management of external borders.
• Assisting Member States in the training of national border guards.
• Carrying out risk analyses.
• Following up the development of research relevant for the control and surveillance of external borders.
• Assisting Member States in circumstances requiring increased technical and operational assistance at external borders.
• Providing Member States with the necessary support in organising joint return operations.

Staff and resources

The institution is centrally and hierarchically organised with a Management Board, consisting of one person of each Member State as well as two members of the Commission. The Member States representatives are operational heads of national security services concerned with border guard management. FRONTEX also has representatives from and works closely with Europol, Interpol, OLAF , the customs cooperation and the cooperation on phyto-sanitary and veterinary controls, in order to promote overall coherency. The Management Board is the leading component of the agency, controlling the personal, financial, and organisational structure, as well as initiating operative tasks in annual work programmes. Additionally, the Board appoints the Executive Director.

As of February 2012, the FRONTEX website listed its secretariat as consisting of 272 seconded national experts, temporary, auxiliary and contract staff. The dependency of the organisation on staff secondments has been identified by external auditors as a risk, since valuable experience may be lost when such staff leave the organisation and return to their permanent jobs.

Risk Analysis Reports

FRONTEX regularly releases reports analyzing events related to border control, irregular border crossing and different forms of cross-border crime. The general task of assessing these risks has been laid out in FRONTEX founding regulation, according to which the agency shall "carry out risk analyses [...] in order to provide the Community and the Member States with adequate information to allow for appropriate measures to be taken or to tackle identified threats and risks with a view to improving the integrated management of external borders". FRONTEX's  key institution with respect to intelligence and risk assessment is its Risk Analysis Unit (RAU) and the Frontex Risk Analysis Network (FRAN), via which the Frontex staff is cooperating with security experts from the Member States.