What is Frontex, Europe's border and migration watchdog?
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00:00 Frontex is the watchdog that monitors all the external borders of the EU and the Schengen
00:05 area, managing migration and fighting cross-border crime.
00:08 This European border and coastguard agency surveys 42,000 kilometres of coastline
00:15 and almost 9,000 kilometres of land borders, collecting data on illegal migration networks,
00:21 which allows EU member states to track and dismantle them.
00:24 Frontex helps countries faced with heavy migration pressure to identify
00:29 and register arriving migrants.
00:31 It also coordinates operations to return illegal migrants to their countries of origin.
00:36 These span across the EU from its eastern borders to the Western Balkans,
00:42 down to Greece and Cyprus, as well as Italy and Spain.
00:45 The agency is also active in non-EU countries like Moldova, Serbia, Montenegro and Albania.
00:53 Founded in 2004, Frontex counts 2,000 employees from 29 countries and deploys between 1,200
01:01 to 1,500 agents in the field.
01:04 It continues to grow rapidly, aiming to employ 10,000 people by 2027
01:10 and reach a budget of 900 million euros.
01:13 The agency recorded 330,000 irregular entries into the European Union in 2022,
01:20 an unprecedented increase of 64% in just 12 months.
01:24 But over the last year, Frontex has also faced a lot of criticism from human rights groups,
01:31 as well as court cases and investigations on their human rights violations
01:35 and illegal repatriation of refugees.