Controversial Frontex boss resigns: Leggeri calls his job "schizophrenic"
Created: 04/29/2022, 20:48
By: Kathrin Reikowski
Frontex boss Fabrice Leggeri at the inauguration of Frontex headquarters in Warsaw.
(Archive image 2017) © Jan A. Nicolas/dpa
Frontex boss Leggeri resigns: Fabrice Leggeri was accused of human rights violations and disloyalty to the EU.
Warsaw - There have long been allegations against the head of the EU border protection agency Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri, for alleged human rights violations at the EU's external borders.
After further investigations by the anti-fraud agency Olaf, Leggeri has now resigned.
The Frontex board of directors discussed the allegations made by Olaf in a two-day meeting, the board said on Friday.
After Leggeri offered his resignation on Thursday, the employment relationship was terminated.
In a previously unpublished report, Olaf accuses Leggeri, among other things, of "not following procedures and showing disloyalty to the European Union," as reported by the French magazine
Le Point
.
However, the pressure on Leggeri had increased, particularly because of the reports of so-called pushbacks at the EU's external borders, which had been accumulating for years.
Frontex resignation: These are illegal pushbacks
A pushback is defined as:
The targeted pushing away of migrants and refugees at sea
Secret deportations
Illegal under international law because asylum applications are prevented
Der
Spiegel
and the Dutch research
network Lighthouse Reports
recently reported on specific cases in the Aegean.
There, the European border guards are said to have spotted and stopped refugee boats, leaving the illegal pushback to the Greek border guards.
Leggeri tried for months to cover up the procedure.
Frontex: Ex-boss complains about schizophrenia of EU instructions after resignation
In the online service Twitter, Leggeri complained in his resignation letter that the Frontex mandate was "apparently tacitly but effectively changed".
In recent months, the Frenchman has publicly admitted that there is a contradiction between Frontex's task of not allowing irregular border crossings and the ban on pushbacks.
In December, he said he was "helpless" when it came to determining his true purpose.
"Nobody can give me the answer.
We are schizophrenic."
The European Commission only said that Frontex's task was to protect both the borders and fundamental rights.
Frontex boss resigns: the reactions from Germany
The German aid organization Sea Watch, which is involved in the rescue of boat people in the Mediterranean, called Leggeri's resignation "overdue, but not sufficient".
The border agency breaks "systematically human rights" and is a "symbol of deadly European isolation".
It must therefore be abolished.
The EU Commission rejected this.
MEP Cornelia Ernst from the Left Party also welcomed the resignation.
Leggeri was "actively involved in Frontex's complicity in violations of fundamental rights and in covering them up," she said in Brussels.
Ernst is a member of a committee of inquiry that has been pushing for clarification for a long time.
A spokesman for the federal government said on Friday that Berlin is "strongly committed within Frontex and in the responsible EU bodies to ensure that all these allegations that exist are clarified and that consequences are drawn from them".
Leggeri's resignation now offers the possibility of a fresh start.
Born in Corsica, he has headed the EU border protection agency based in Warsaw since 2015.
(AFP/kat)