czymjestfrontex: What is Frontex?

What is Frontex?

Did you know that the European Agency responsible for protecting the EU borders is in Warsaw? Magda Qandil (UNHCR consultant), Roman Kurkiewicz (Journalist) and the Collective Syrena talked about it at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw) on the 29th of July, as part of the Public a-i-r Festival.

Public a-i-r Festival.
Lecture space.

Lecturers and
Roman Kurkiewicz's transformation from Pro-Frontex to Anti-Frontex.

What is Frontex?

Frontex is the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union.

It is responsible for co-ordinating the activities of the national border guards in ensuring the security of the EU's borders with non-member states.

Since its creation it is hosted in Warsaw (Poland). The agency started to be operational on October 3, 2005 and was the first EU agency to be based in one of the new EU states from former East Europe.

The main three objectives of the agency are:

- Coordination between the Member States related to border control.
- Analysis of risk of the eventual problematic parts of the EU border.
- Training of border guards through seminars, workshops and its ten academies placed in the rest of Europe.

Apart from this three main points, Frontex is also involved both, in coordinating deportations from EU states to third-countries, and in supporting technological research from private companies of surveillance material.

The budget of the agency has increased from 6,280,202 euros in 2005 to 87,917,000 euros in 2010.