Frontex head: "Border management will not make much of a difference"

The Executive Director of the EU border agency Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri, told German daily Die Welt in an interview that the planned increase of the agency's staff to 1.000 until 2020 will not suffice to get a grip on the refugee crisis. “Border management by itself will not be able to make much of a difference, most of all we have to take care of the root causes why so many migrants are currently pushing towards Europe,” Leggeri said.

Earlier this week, Frontex sent 293 officers and 15 boats to the Aegean islands. Dozens more Frontex staff are to be dispatched to Greece over the coming weeks. Greek government sources indicated however that the size of the Frontex force is still insufficient to deal with the refugees crisis, Kathimerini reported. Meanwhile, EPP parliamentary group leader Manfred Weber in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine raised the possibility of a temporary exit of Greece from the Schengen area. See also our cepInput on the empirical and legal aspects of the refugee crisis.