The European Commission is planning to give more resources and new powers to the bloc’s border-control agency, Frontex, officials familiar with the issue have said, amid concern at illegal migration and hybrid threats. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to outline plans to overhaul Frontex during her State of the European Union address next Wednesday. Frontex’s role in migration management and securing the EU’s external borders has grown steadily since its inception in 2004 and came to the fore in May, when tens of thousands of migrants forced entry into Spain’s north-African exclave of Ceuta. Among the latest proposals to boost the Warsaw-based agency is a tripling of its standing corps of border guards to 30,000 officers, according to EU officials cited by the Euractiv news service. New powers Another possibility to be considered in a review of Frontex’s mandate scheduled for October is enhanced powers to cooperate with non-EU countries, including the ability to conduct repatriation flights from one country outside the bloc to another, Euractiv’s sources said. A further proposal on the table is extending Frontex’s remit to monitoring disinformation on social media, as well as new responsibilities to counter hybrid threats, including monitoring airspace over land borders and countering the use of drones, Euractiv reported. A further possibility is the reinstatement of a rapid-response capability for deployment in border emergencies, according to Euractiv.
