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Frontex (from French: Frontières extérieures for ‘external borders’, legally: European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union) is the European Union agency for external border security. 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. Frontex is headquartered in Warsaw, Poland.
Frontex was established by Council Regulation (EC) 2007/2004. The agency started to be operational on October 3, 2005 and was the first EU agency to be based in one of the members who joined in 2004.
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Frontex's mission is to help EU Member States implement EU rules on external border controls and to coordinate operational cooperation between Member States in the field of external border management. While it remains the task of each member state to control its own borders, the Agency is vested with the function to ensure that they all do so with the same high standard of efficiency.
The main tasks of the agency include:
The Agency is managed by its Executive Director, Ilkka Laitinen. The agency initially struggled to recruit staff [1] due to its location in Warsaw, which offered lower pay than some other cities, and the unclear agency mandate.
| Aeroplanes | 20 |
|---|---|
| Helicopters | ~30 |
| Vessels | ~100 |
Special European forces of rapidly deployable border guards were created by EU interior ministers in April 2007 to assist in border control, particularly on Europe's southern coastlines.[2] Frontex's European Patrols Network began work in the Canary Islands in May 2007.[3]
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