A report on the illegal practice of “Pushbacks” overwhelms the former Directorate of the European Agency for Coast Guards and Border Guards.
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On February 15, the European Antifraude Wrestling Office (Olaf) made its conclusions, after a year of investigation, on the management within Frontex of the spine question of “Pushbacks”. It has been years that the Greek coast guards have been accused of practicing these migrant repression, contrary to the Geneva Convention, under the eye, accomplice, of the richest agency in the European Union.
The report, which has partially caused the fall of former director Fabrice Leggeri, has since been at the center of a battle between the Commission and European parliamentarians, which fire all wood to obtain its publication. In Brussels, the document, known to a limited number of civil servants and elected officials, is deemed to be so toxic as no one would like to read it. The new director of Frontex, the Lettonne Aija Kalnaja, assured that she did not read it. And the vice-president of the commission, the Greek Margaritis Schinas, a historic support of Fabrice Leggeri, refused to say in the meeting if he had read it or not.
This report, that Le Monde and its partners of Lighthouse Reports, as well as the German weekly Der Spiegel, were able to consult, details by the menu the sins of the European super-aging of coast guards and guards- borders as well as the excesses of his previous direction. It also confirms the massive use of the illegal “pushback” technique by the Greek authorities to discourage migrants from entering European soil. As well as the detailed knowledge that Frontex had of the phenomenon had.
“These evictions must cease”
Faced with these revelations, difficult not to question the position of the European Commission. The latter, who learned of Olaf’s conclusions at the end of February, only recently warned Greece in the face of the frequency of accusations of human rights violation of which it is the subject. Without questioning, for the time being, the deployment of Frontex on the peninsula. “The protection of the external border of the EU against illegal entries is an obligation. But the violent and illegal expulsions of migrants must cease, now,” Tonnée Ylva Johansson, European commissioner in charge of internal affairs, at the end of ‘A call with three members of the Greek executive, including the Minister of Police on June 30. Five days later, facing European parliamentarians, the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, swept away most of these accusations, calling them “Turkish propaganda”.
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