Frontex is tasked with a delicate mission: helping guard the European Union’s external borders while upholding the rights of newcomers, including to apply for asylum. It supports border countries like Greece by deploying guards from all over Europe and providing helicopters, boats, drones and other equipment.
Europe’s migration policy has significantly hardened in recent years, following the arrival of more than one million refugees, mostly from Syria, from 2015 to 2016. The migration fueled the campaigns of populist, far-right parties around the European Union, and contributed to a shift in mainstream E.U. politics to the right.
On Sunday Greeks re-elected the conservative New Democracy party, giving a vote of confidence to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a leading proponent of a hard-line migration policy.
As the angst over migration has grown across the bloc, so has Frontex, which is now the bloc’s best-funded agency.
Frontex, too, has been accused of overlooking, covering up and even participating in human rights violations. Last year, its executive director resigned over accusations of harassment, mismanagement and rights abuses, and the agency pledged reforms under new leadership.
But the alleged rights violations in Greece show the complexity of the task.
Mr. Grimheden has repeatedly recommended that Frontex suspend operations in Greece, saying in earlier reports that he had “credible reports” of the Greek authorities expelling migrants at land and sea, separating children from parents and treating migrants in a “degrading” way.
Instead of pausing operations, Frontex set up a joint “working group” with Greece.
Months later, Mr. Grimheden said in the latest report, “in substance nothing appears to have changed as regards the practices of the Greek authorities.”
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