On Frontex – Der Spiegel (Giorgos Christides, Steffen Lüdke, Maximilian Popp and Tomas Statius):

‘OLAF [European Anti-Fraud Office] spent over a year on the investigation, even searching the office of Frontex head Fabrice Leggeri and those of his closest aides. The agency’s closing report is more than 200 pages long and strictly confidential. Even European parliamentarians, who are tasked with controlling Frontex, only received an oral summary of the report. And it was a bombshell.
According to several people who were in attendance for the oral summary, the OLAF report accuses three members of Frontex leadership of having violated EU regulations. Furthermore, those violations were allegedly severe enough that OLAF has recommended disciplinary measures.’

(…)

‘Such operations are referred to among human rights activists as pushbacks, and they are illegal under European Union law. In cooperation with Lighthouse Reports and other partner media outlets, DER SPIEGEL has collected and published clear evidence of the systematic use of pushbacks on the EU’s external border. The reporting has also demonstrated that several pushbacks have occurred with Frontex border guards in the immediate area, even handing over refugee boats to the Greek officials before they then towed the boats back into Turkish water. In at least two cases, Frontex planes observed pushback operations from the air.
Frontex head Leggeri has consistently evaded the accusations. In hearings at the European Parliament, he has insisted that he knows nothing about such operations, and he has also defended the Greek government. And when questions have hit a bit too close to home, he has sought to exhaust his interlocutors with long monologues full of bureaucratic details, or he begins holding forth about "hybrid threats." In Brussels, people have begun calling him "Fabrice Teflon."’

(…)

‘OLAF has taken a close look at how Frontex has handled the pushbacks, and the agency’s findings are consistent with reporting conducted by DER SPIEGEL and its partners. According to Itälä’s briefing, OLAF has obtained evidence that information was withheld from the FRO and that the incidents were intentionally classified as not being possible human rights violations to avoid further scrutiny.
In his presentation, OLAF Director General Itälä provided the European parliamentarians with detailed information about witness interviews. One Frontex official, he reported, said that agency staff is generally convinced that illegal pushbacks were performed in the Aegean and that the Frontex leadership sought to cover them up for political reasons. He says that one Frontex official testified that his staff had wanted to adhere to the applicable regulations, but that "senior management" had covered up the possible legal violations potentially committed by EU member states.’

(…)

‘But the question as to whether Leggeri will in fact be removed from his post is a political one, and only the Management Board has the power to do so. The board includes representatives from governments of Schengen member states. Management Board meetings are confidential, but internal meeting minutes obtained by DER SPIEGEL and Lighthouse Reports indicate that Germany has thus far always stood by Leggeri.
Whereas the European Commission called an emergency session of the Management Board after initial reports published by DER SPIEGEL about potential pushbacks and provided details to the Frontex fundamental rights officer, then-German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer wasn’t particularly concerned. He insisted that Germany’s top priority was the fight against terrorism, according to the minutes from the Nov. 10, 2020, meeting, and insisted that Frontex needed to be reinforced.
A working group under German leadership was ultimately unable to find proof for the pushbacks. Particularly clear examples, such as the pushback that Frontex itself recorded, proved impossible for the working group – according to the group itself – to completely clear up. Meeting minutes seem to indicate that the group wasn’t particularly interested in an in-depth investigation. "It would be beneficial to add some positive aspects about Frontex operations to present the agency in a better light," it reads in one spot.’

(…)

‘In Berlin, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, a member of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), must now decide on her position regarding the Frontex chief. Ahead of last year’s election, the SPD had demanded new leadership for Frontex, without Leggeri. The coalition agreement hammered out by the SPD with its two junior partners, the Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats, expresses a desire to "end illegal returns and the suffering on the EU’s external borders." Thus far, that goal has yet to be reached in the Aegean. In part because Frontex has taken no steps to stop them, the Greeks are continuing with their pushback strategy – more brutal than ever.’

Read the complete article here.

The pushbacks continue because the powers that be in the EU couldn’t care less.

While the Dutch king announced that he will house a few Ukrainian families in one of his castles, on the outskirts of the EU the pushbacks continue.

As has been noted right from the beginning of the war in Ukraine, one refugee is not the other.

The fact that many people in Europe (and not only there) prefer white Ukrainians to not so white Syrians of Afghans should not come as a surprise. We can label this preference racism, but Freud already said that loving the whole world is loving nobody.
Many people are not yet fulltime humanist and identify with people who are more or less like themselves and disidentify with people who are different, or who appear to be different.

It gets nasty when politicians use and encourage these reflexes. Well, in the last two decades we have witnessed a seemingly relentless stream of incidents, of politicians in Europe and elsewhere who portrayed non-Westerns immigrants and sometimes even Eastern European immigrants as subhuman.

A certain amount of hypocrisy is unavoidable, but the pushback strategy of the EU i.e. the pushback strategy that the EU let happen because once again who cares, is a stain on the moral foundations of this institution. And after all the EU wants to be a community of values.
I wrote already a few months ago in a Dutch newspaper, in the periphery of the EU the values fade away quickly.