Fabrice Leggeri

Internal documents have disclosed that officers from the European border and coast guard agency Frontex have been pressured to remain silent about the mistreatment of refugees and migrants at the Bulgarian-Turkish border. This revelation comes from journalist Maria Cheresheva, who shared findings from her investigation with BNR.

A drone operated by the European border protection agency, Frontex, crashed into the sea 70 nautical miles southeast of Crete on Thursday.

According to reports, the Israeli-built Heron was on a surveillance mission when, for reasons unknown, it lost communication with the ground station and went down.

Greece's new minister for migration said Monday he would consider it "unthinkable" for the European Union to pull out its border protection force from the country, and promised to address a growing list of international grievances over dealing with migrants.

The new executive director of European Union border agency Frontex pledged Thursday to ensure that illegal pushbacks of migrants trying to reach Europe wouldn't take place under his watch.

On November 17 last year, when Hervé Yves Caniard entered the 14-floor conference room of the European Union border agency Frontex in Warsaw, European newspapers were flooded with stories of refugees a few hundreds kilometres away, braving the cold at the Belarusian border with Poland.

The European Union has finally started to see the Greek policy of pushbacks in the Aegean Sea, which has claimed many lives of asylum seekers, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on May 7.

The Commission is not currently going to respond to Greece's request for financing the activity of the Greek Coast Guard to the tune of 15.8 million euros.

The number of migrants illegally entering the European Union by crossing the Western Balkans has almost doubled this year, EU border agency Frontex said on Thursday, with the majority coming from Syria and Afghanistan, Reuters reported.

The EU is looking to plug a big gap in migration policy by boosting measures to have irregular migrants voluntarily returned to their countries under a strategy adopted on Tuesday (27 April).

The board of directors of the European border agency Frontex, which met on Wednesday and Thursday, has decided to further investigate five of 13 reported cases of illegal migrants pushbacks last year, with the alleged help of Frontex guards, from Greece into Turkish territorial waters in the eastern Aegean.