Frontex gets new competences

 

  

News Article
14 September 2011

 

The European border agency Frontex will be provided with extended competences, the European Parliament decided on September 13th. The agreed provisions should also strengthen migrants’ rights. According to EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, the measures will "strengthen safeguards so as to guarantee the full respect of fundamental rights and improve the ability of Frontex to support member states more efficiently and more independently." 

 


 

Upcoming events

Monday 07 November 2011


Europe’s security thinking is to undergo an overhaul once the EU’s new diplomatic arm - the European External Action Service (EEAS) – formulates its responses to fast-moving security challenges, including those of the Arab Spring. How best can these EU-level responses be reconciled with member states’ national interests and policies, and can recent initiatives such as the Franco-British defence agreement or the looser Franco-German-Polish “Weimar Triangle” give Europe’s defence drive fresh impetus? How can European countries’ situation-awareness be improved as a means of developing a coherent security strategy? What can Europe do to improve civ-mil cooperation aspects of its crisis management? Above all, will the financial crisis and defence cuts at last yield progress on pooling and sharing? And on emerging and future threats, what must Europe do to tackle its cyberdefence shortcomings while also addressing its weakened maritime security?

These are among the issues to be addressed on 7 November at the Security & Defence Day conference, co-organised by the Security & Defence Agenda and CEIS, where keynote speakers include Gérard Longuet, French Defence Minister; Thomas de Maizière, German Defence Minister; Jan Borkowski, Polish Secretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Michel Barnier, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services. The conference will be chaired by Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, SDA co-president and former NATO Secretary General.