Two years after his role, the Executive Director of Frontex, Hans Leijtens, told Euronews that his ambition to change the culture of the organization will take the full three years until the end of his mandate.
He says that internal transparency is “essential” – and in a movement against a current trend led by the United States, he says that Frontex must better embrace the diversity of gender and identity.
“It is a question of recruitment, it is a question of being a fair organization, of being a diversified organization, both in gender, but also in nationalities,” he told the conversation in Europe.
“Culture is very difficult to change, but I think we are doing steps right now. I think it will certainly take the rest of my mandate, which is still three years, to really change it.”
For several years, Frontex has been synonymous with “decline”, the policy of conducting migrant ships intercepted in the Mediterranean outside the EU waters, where people cross Europe in dangerously overcrowded or fragile ships of nuclei regularly.
In 2022, an Olaf anti-fraud office report revealed that Frontex covered illegal “repressed” of migrants by the Greek coast guard while the organization was led by the predecessor of Leijtens, Fabrice Leggeri.
Leijtens maintains that Frontex must work in a particular mandate and that the State Coast Guard – often Greece – has its own responsibilities.
“Indeed, we see and we also observe that sometimes there are incidents,” he said in relation to many occasions where people drown in European or international waters.
He said he would prefer that Greece is satisfied with international law in this area. In the current state, the Greek authorities are accused of 13 potential human rights violations with Frontex, and the organization has planned to reduce its funding.
“I would like, in Greece, I would have occurred what I would have liked to occur in all the countries with which we cooperate, that they respect the rules and that if there is an incident and that it can happen, that it is duly studied and that it has consequences,” he said.
The conversation in Europe questions Leijtens about the notorious case of the Adriana ship, which capsized and sunk in international waters off the Greek coast in June 2023, killing 600 people. He replied that Frontex alerted the Greek authorities to what was going on and that his agency was not responsible for the brutal consequences.
“I was myself in the surveillance room when we spotted the ship for the first time. So I saw it the day before the decline,” he said. “What we can do then is that when we had a plane, we can inform, in this case, the Greek authorities about what we see. We cannot coordinate.”
However, there will always be a blatant question: if there is something more than Frontex could have done to save the lives of those in danger, since Leijtens and his team were aware of the presence of Adriana.
“At the time, we had a flying drone, a flying plane, and we were asked to go to another incident south of Crete,” he said.
“We have proposed to the Greek authorities to send another plane twice. We have already been clear to this day of the incident, that we have proposed this to the Greeks, and the two times were ignored by the Greek authority.”
ADVERTISEMENT“It's their decision.”
