By Nathalie Vandystadt
The new European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Swedish born Cecilia Malmström, will begin her term with a proposal for a regulation, on 24 February, intended to strengthen the operational capacities of Frontex, the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union.
The primary aims of this proposal, as she explained during her hearing before members of the European Parliament, are to allow the agency created and based in Warsaw to buy its own equipment without having to depend on member states and to train its staff in fundamental rights and the principle of not “over-crowding”. She failed however to elaborate on the facilities required. According to her spokesperson, the idea is to provide Frontex with its “own resources”, human and material (vessels and helicopters) to render it “more effective”.
Among EU member states, France and Italy have both put pressure on the Commission for proposals to strengthen the agency. At the beginning of January, after nine immigrants drowned off the coast of Greece, the French minister for immigration, Eric Besson, announced he would intervene with the European Commission to “ask that decisions taken by heads of state and government of European countries to strengthen Frontex be implemented without delay”. He recalled that these decisions adopted by the European Council on 30 October 2009 included increased operational cooperation between Frontex and the countries of origin and transit, notably Libya and Turkey, and the possibility of regularly co-chartering flights financed by Frontex for “grouped distancing operations at European level”.
Ms Malmström, a liberal, a former European Parliament member and a former minister for European affairs in Sweden, is seen by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs as being “quite open” on immigration. The commissioner has said she would like a “European policy on asylum and illegal immigration that is founded on common values and fundamental rights”.
The regulation proposal is expected to be approved by the Council and the EP.
Stable budget for 2010
According to the latest annual report published by Frontex, the resources allocated for operations on the ground and in the air, respectively 4.25 million and 2.69 million euro, would not change in 2010. On sea, the budget will drop from 36.1 million to 26.5 million euro. Altogether the budget available to Frontex will drop from 88.8 million to 87.9 million euro (in 2005, it was only 6.2 million euro) and will be divided as follows: 65% for operations and 35% for administrative costs (see Europolitics n°3894).
