EU to Increase Border Guards By Nearly Ten Times

frontex
Frontex
Chris Tomlinson

The European Union has announced it will be massively increasing the number of agents at its Frontex border agency, from 1,500 today to around 10,000 by the year 2027.

The new policy was adopted by MEPs earlier this week and will see the border agency gradually increase personnel to monitor the political bloc’s common external border, though not all countries within the bloc are pleased with the move, RTS reports.

The main opposition to the new plan was voiced by two of the border states within the EU, Greece and Italy, who argued that the move could be an attempt by the EU to interfere in their domestic affairs.

European Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos attempted to ease the worries of the two nations, saying, “there is not a shadow of a doubt, there can be no intervention by the agency without the express consent of the Member States concerned or third countries concerned.”

The expansion of Frontex will also see the agency given a huge budget increase, which will allow it to deploy agents beyond the European Union and to invest in its own ships and aeroplanes.

Frontex has been criticised by other sovereigntist figures in the past including populist Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, who said it was, “anything but a border guard” and even labelled Frontex a “people trafficking organisation” in May of last year.

Hungarian State Secretary for International Communications and Relations Dr Zoltán Kovács also warned in March that the expansion of Frontex would undermine Hungarian national sovereignty.

“It’s never ‘strengthening’ or ‘defending’ borders. It’s always about ‘managing’ them and that’s a euphemism for immigration,” Kovács said.

The Hungarian government has suggested the EU wants to reinforce its role in border management not to protect Europe’s frontiers, but to stop national border agencies in anti-mass migration countries from keeping them shut.

Frontex, meanwhile, has confirmed the efficacy of the anti-mass migration policies of Italian populist Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini, admitting his move to close Italian ports to migrant rescue NGOs had greatly reduced the number of new migrant arrivals and overall drownings.

Vice-President of the Italian Senate, Roberto Calderoli, himself a member of Salvini’s Lega party, labelled the report a victory for Salvini despite the Interior Minister’s name not being mentioned in the report itself.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

 

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