Editing Search and rescue (section)

==3.1 Frontex==
Frontex is the European Union agency responsible for “European integrated border management” (EU, 2016). Its mission is to “ensure safe and well-functioning external borders providing security” (Frontex, 2019).

Frontex was founded by a Council Regulation in 2004 as the “European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders” and became operational a year later. The founding regulation was amended several times, until it was replaced by a new Regulation in 2016, establishing a “European Border and Coast Guard” (European Commission, 2004; EU, 2016). These repeated legal revisions are mirrored by a rapid organisational growth of the agency. Frontex, currently, has a budget of over 300 million euros and will dispose of 11.3 billion euros in 2021–2027, with which it aims to finance a 10,000 standing corps of operational staff and acquire its own ships, vehicles and planes (European Commission, 2018).Frontex plays a central role in managing and regulating sea rescue operations within the EU. EU law, particularly regulations related to Frontex, outlines the responsibilities, actions, and legal parameters for Frontex-coordinated rescue operations.

Ten studies (14 per cent) shed light on the nature and implementation of Frontex’ activities. The Frontex Regulation has been repeatedly revised to expand the agency’s mandate. In fact, Article 8 of the EU Regulation establishing the European Border and Coast Guard identified no less than 21 tasks that Frontex is mandated to carry out. Beyond merely listing these responsibilities, these studies describe how such official tasks are translated into practice.
                                           
Frontex can be viewed as the EU’s attempt to implement “integrated border management” (IBM), which aims to introduce non-arrival measures and curb illegal migration. This requires cooperation of Frontex with various partners, such as Member States, third countries and relevant other agencies (e.g. Europol) (Demmelhuber, 2011). Frontex is primarily preoccupied with joint operations to reinforce border control, many of which focus on the Mediterranean (Üstübici and Içduygu, 2018). To this end, Frontex coordinates the deployment of border officials, who participate in border patrol, thereby contributing to the arrest of suspected facilitators and setting in motion a continuous decline in the number of migrants crossing (Tryfon, 2012). An analysis of hot spot “Moria” on Lesbos, Greece, demonstrates that Frontex personnel not only monitors the border but also engages in migrant identification and registration. As migrants arrive in the camp, they access a “registration street”, in which Frontex screeners identify the nationality of migrants, while advanced-level document officers check the veracity of their identification papers. Fingerprinters take fingerprints and enter these into databases, after which Frontex’ partners begin the asylum process and provide humanitarian aid.<ref name="Frontex: A Literature Review">{{cite book |last1=Kalkman |first1=Jori Pascal |title=Frontex: A Literature Review |date=17 June 2020}}</ref>

To facilitate the effective and efficient deployment of personnel and capabilities, Frontex also gathers intelligence and produces its own risk analyses, which address the (expected) situation at the EU external borders. As its intelligence role is growing, the agency collects data from cross-border movements inside the EU and from entrance information that Member States and the various organisational partners provide (Den Boer, 2015; Takle, 2017).<ref name="Frontex: A Literature Review"/> Some of this information is also retrieved from third countries, with which Frontex has concluded working arrangements. This is beneficial for Frontex as it ensures continuous data exchange on relevant migration trends and the sharing of best practices (Coman-Kund, 2018). In turn, representatives of these third countries have been participant observers in Frontex operations (Sagrera, 2014). To what extent these agreements are binding remains subject to debate (cf. Sagrera, 2014; Coman-Kund, 2018).
Finally, Frontex also mediates between the Member States to coordinate joint returns when multiple Member States have nationals of the same country to be sent back. The agency makes sure that returnees are gathered in one Member State from where a collective return flight departs. A Frontex staff member monitors compliance with its Code of Conduct when it organises the return flight (Pirjola, 2015).
It is striking how rapid Frontex’ responsibilities have expanded. Frontex’ tasks, first of all, horizontally expanded with its mandate to set up rapid response teams that can be deployed on short notice. Frontex’ tasks have also deepened as existing responsibilities were elaborated. For instance, Frontex received the authority to organise return flights. At this moment, Frontex could even contribute to the reintroduction of border controls when a Member State does not comply with the recommendations that follow its vulnerability assessments (Scipioni, 2017).
Current studies on Frontex display strong links to the field of critical theory, migration law research and literature on EU public administration. This has provided many insightful publications. Yet, there are very few connections with organisation and management literature, crisis studies and policing scholarship, even though these disciplines may improve our understanding of Frontex’ agency characteristics, how it operates during joint operations and how Frontex negotiates tensions between providing care and exercising control. Likewise, EU studies can shed light on the relations between EU agencies and other European actors and what this means for their relative autonomy (e.g. Egeberg and Trondal, 2011). Next, while there are some links between the five themes, these connections can be reinforced in the interest of theory-building. For instance, there is a suggestion that Frontex’ autonomy (in line with neo-institutionalist explanations) reduces its accountability (Carrera et al., 2013). Likewise, Frontex’ limited accountability and transparency may help to explain its continuing struggles with human rights. In general, as Frontex continues to expand, new theory-building is needed to further assess and understand the agency and its impact.