Two years into his role, Frontex’s Executive Director Hans Leijtens tells Euronews his ambition to change the culture of the organisation will take the full three years left until the end of his term of office.
He says internal transparency is “pivotal” — and in a move against a current US-led trend, he says Frontex needs to better embrace gender and identity diversity.
“It’s about recruitment, it is about being a fair organisation, being a diverse organisation, both in gender, but also in nationalities”, he tells the Europe Conversation.
“Culture is very difficult to change, but I think we’re making steps right now. I think that it will take for sure the rest of my mandate, which is another three years, to really change it.”
For several years, Frontex has been synonymous with “pushbacks”, the policy of driving migrant ships intercepted in the Mediterranean back out of EU waters, where people crossing to Europe in dangerously overcrowded or flimsy vessels routinely drown.
In 2022, a report from OLAF the EU’s anti-fraud office found Frontex covered up illegal “pushbacks” of migrants by the Greek coastguard while the organisation was led by Leijtens’ predecessor, Fabrice Leggeri.
Leijtens maintains that Frontex must work within a particular mandate, and that the coast guard of the state – often Greece – has its own responsibilities.
“Indeed, we see and we also observe ourselves that sometimes there are incidents”, he says in relation to numerous occasions when people drown in either European or international waters.
He said he would prefer if Greece complied with international law in the matter. As things stand, the Greek authorities are accused of 13 potential human rights violations with Frontex, and the organisation has considered slashing its funding.
“I would like in Greece to happen what I would have like to happen every country with which we cooperate, that they comply with the rules and that if there is an incident and that can happen, that it is duly investigated and that it has consequences”, he said.
The Europe Conversation asks Leijtens about the notorious case of the Adriana ship, which capsized and sank in international waters off the Greek coast in June 2023, killing 600 people. He responds that Frontex alerted the Greek authorities to what was happening, and that his agency was not responsible for the brutal aftermath.
“I was myself in the monitoring room when we first spotted the ship. So I saw it myself the day before it went down”, he says. “What we can do then is when we had a plane, we can inform, in this case, the Greek authorities about what we see. We cannot coordinate.”
Nonetheless, there will always be one glaring question: whether there is something more Frontex could have done to save the lives of those in danger, given Leijtens and his team were aware of the Adriana’s presence.
“Back then we had one drone flying, one plane flying, and we were instructed to go to another incident south of Crete”, he says.
“We proposed to the Greek authorities to send another plane twice. We have been already clear about that from the day after the incident, that we proposed this to the Greeks, and both times was ignored by the Greek authority.”
ADVEReadNOWISEMENT“That’s their decision.”