The European Commission has set out plans to make Frontex able to put officers on a crisis border within 24 hours.
Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner set out the plan on September 29 in a five-point package to prevent, anticipate and respond to sudden mass arrivals.
The agency would keep a standing corps ready for immediate deployment, but would still go only if a member state asked.
European People’s Party (EPP) president Manfred Weber had wanted Frontex given operational command after the Ceuta mass border crossing.
Weber also pleaded for repatriation centres in Africa in a guest column for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on August 10. “Europe must quickly implement return hubs in Africa,” he demanded. “Migrants without the right to stay must leave Europe – without ifs and buts!”
He wanted the agency built up to 50,000 personnel, securing the external borders alongside national forces.
On German television on August 4 he had said Frontex should be able to take command where a member state could not or would not secure its own external border.
Brunner did not offer that. Governments, he said, wanted a stronger, more flexible agency with more staff.
He said Frontex must proceed “faster and more agilely” in border protection and also help with “hybrid threats”.
The Commission said it would propose a wider mandate, extra resources and a larger role in returns.
Frontex’s new force would be tasked with identifying people who must leave and coordinating flights.
No cost figure was given.
Member states still have to approve the proposed package. Interior ministers from the 27 member states were due to discuss it in Luxembourg on October 2.
The plan follows the surge on July 30-31, when about 72,000 illegal migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, on the north African coast, in two days.
The Spanish interior ministry put the death toll at 75 in Spanish waters, with Morocco acknowledging a further 11 in its own. Most later returned. Brunner said some 10,000 remain.
Ceuta is not in the Schengen area, and Brunner repeated that nobody from that surge entered Schengen.
He called the episode a stress test the Union had passed, then said the next step was to close the gaps it exposed.
The crossing still caused a political shock across Europe.
Italy led the reaction by temporarily suspending Schengen free-travel rules with Spain and reintroducing checks on arrivals from there. France ordered immediate reinforcement of checks on its Spanish border and Finland backed Italian calls for Spain to be excluded from the passport-free area.
On September 26, three days before Brunner’s press conference, German interior minister Alexander Dobrindt told colleagues in Munich that Europe needed a crisis mechanism and that Frontex reaction teams should be able to move within a day. Brunner attended that meeting.
Spain has already asked for a permanent Frontex presence in Ceuta and Melilla and for extra officers to screen those still in the city.
The Commission has sent €114.7 million in emergency funding and extended joint operations into 2027. The money was approved on September 9 and drawn from the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (€82.7 million) and the Border Management and Visa Instrument (€32 million).
The other parts of the plan are meant to support that force. Brussels wants earlier warning from third countries, closer work with Europol and Eurojust on the routes, and a legal basis for Frontex to watch social media, the tool used to organise the rush on Ceuta.
Smuggling networks would be a target.
Origin countries would get more aid, again without a published sum. Trade agreements and visa policy would also be used as leverage with countries of origin and transit.
