The European Union's border protection agency Frontex announced that it will set forth an action plan with Greece to correct the mistakes of the past and present in response to the increasing allegations of illegal pushbacks and mistreatment of refugees.
Quoted by the Turkish Communications Directorate, Frontex admitted that it has been a part of Greece’s inhumane treatment of migrants.
"These were practices made in the past,” Frontex said.
However, Frontex has constantly denied the accusations. A total of 62,179 foreigners, including children and women, were pushed back to Türkiye by Greece and Frontex. As a result of these pushback events, 152 foreigners died from 2020 to 2022.
Frontex supervises the 27-nation EU’s outside borders. The agency is under pressure over allegations that it was involved in the illegal pushbacks of migrants, notably in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Türkiye. Its executive director resigned earlier this year after an anti-fraud office probe.
A report by the EU’s anti-fraud office, OLAF, examined Frontex activities in Greece from spring to autumn 2020 and found that the agency wasn’t investigating or handling evidence of migrant pushbacks correctly and at times was attempting to cover them up or not reporting them at all.
Pushbacks – the forcible return of people across an international border, on land or at sea, without an assessment of their rights to apply for asylum or other forms of protection – violate both international and EU law.
Greek authorities have long been accused by human rights lawyers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), media investigations, Turkish authorities and other entities of conducting violent and fatal pushbacks of migrants and refugees crossing its borders from Türkiye.
