EU border agents are failing to report rights violations committed against migrants and refugees on the Albanian-Greek border, according to an investigation by #BIRN.
In February last year, Aija Kalnaja, then the acting head of the European Union’s border agency, Frontex, received a strongly-worded email from the person in charge of making sure the agency adheres to EU law and fundamental human rights in policing the bloc’s boundaries.
To anyone unfamiliar with the bureaucratic language of Brussels, the subject line might look cryptic: “Albania, ping-pong pushbacks, and avoiding SIRs”.
But the content was clear: a Frontex officer had just returned from deployment to the border between Albania and EU member Greece with a “very troublesome account” of what was happening there, Jonas Grimheden, head of Frontex’s Fundamental Rights Office, FRO, wrote in the email, obtained by BIRN.
“Apart from stories of Greek police bringing migrants to the border, and Albanian police returning them in an endless ping-pong game,” Grimheden wrote, the officer said he and his colleagues had “implicit instructions not to issue SIRs”.
A SIR is a Serious Incident Report, which Frontex officers are ‘obliged’ to file as soon as they became aware of a possible violation of the fundamental rights afforded migrants and refugees under international law, whether committed by border guards of countries that Frontex collaborates with or officers deployed directly by the agency.
It was unclear who issued the ‘instructions’ the officer referred to.
According to the officer, whose account was also obtained by BIRN in redacted form, so-called ‘pushbacks’ – in which police send would-be asylum seekers back over the border without due process, in violation of international human rights standards – are “a known thing within Frontex” and all the officer’s colleagues were “told not to write a serious incident report because it just went that way there”. Pushbacks, he was saying, were regularly occurring on the Albanian-Greek border.
Frontex has faced years of criticism for failing to address rights violations committed by member-states in policing the bloc’s borders.
Now, this BIRN analysis of internal Frontex documents and reporting from the field has unearthed serious indications of systematic pushbacks at the Albanian-Greek border as well as fresh evidence that such unlawful practices are often evading Frontex’s own rights monitoring mechanism.
Asked whether rights violations were being underreported, a Frontex spokesman told BIRN that such claims were “completely and demonstrably false”.
At Frontex, every officer is required to report any “suspected violations,” said Chris Borowski.
Yet Grimheden, the FRO head, said underreporting remains a “highly problematic” issue within the agency. It “undermines the very system we are dependent on,” he told BIRN.
‘Sent back badly beaten’
Three kilometres from Ieropigi, the last Greek village before the border with Albania, stands a Greek army building, disused for decades.
On the grassy floor are signs of humans having passed through: packets of ready-made food; the ashes of a campfire; words carved in Arabic on the walls.
Until autumn last year, dozens of migrants and refugees stopped here every day en route to Albania, hoping to then enter Kosovo or Montenegro, then Serbia and eventually Croatia or Hungary, both part of Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone. They would have originally reached Greece from Turkey, either by land or sea, but few see Greece as a final destination.
When BIRN visited, the weather was wet and fog obscured the hill on the other side of the border, in Albania.
“I used to meet beaten migrants and ask them if this happened in Albania and they used to reply: ‘They beat us and send us back, they take our money, mobile phones, expensive shoes. Everything they had that was expensive was taken and they were push-backed,” said Spyros Trassias, a local shepherd. “Sometimes they might shout ‘Policia’ and signalled that they were being beaten. Other times smugglers would beat them, take their money and send them back.”
According to local residents, the number of refugees and migrants trying to cross the border near Ieropigi dropped dramatically after a network of smugglers was dismantled in September last year.
BIRN did not come across any Greek border patrols, but the head of the Union of Border Guards of Kastoria, Kyriakos Papoutsidis, told BIRN the border is guarded 24-hours a day. Many of those they intercept, he said, have already applied for asylum on the Greek islands or in the capital, Athens. “Any migrant who comes to the area is advised to return to the city where they applied for asylum and must remain there,” Papoutsidis said.
Warning of ‘collective expulsion’
Frontex officers have been present on both sides of the border, under a 2019 agreement that launched the agency’s first ever joint operation outside the bloc.
Just months after deploying, Frontex faced accusations of pushbacks being carried out by Albanian authorities.
According to documents seen by BIRN, little has changed over the last five years. The FRO has repeatedly raised concerns about Albania’s non-compliance with lawful border management procedures, warning in multiple SIRs that “unlawful collective returns characterised by a lack of safeguards could amount to collective expulsion”.
In one FRO report from November 2022, in reference to pushbacks, they went as far as to say that the “sum of alleged facts could indicate the existence of a pattern occurring at the border between Albania and Greece”.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, voiced similar concerns in its 2023 report on Albania’s progress towards EU accession, when it referred to “shortcomings identified in its return mechanism for irregular migrants” and cited continued reports of migrants “being returned to Greece without adequate pre-screening”.
In July 2023, in a ‘due diligence’ assessment of plans for enhanced collaboration between Frontex and Albania, the FRO noted “cases of ill-treatment” and “allegations of irregular returns” of migrants to Greece. Yet it endorsed the new arrangement, which was rubber-stamped by Tirana and the EU two months later.
Asked about the allegation of migrants and refugees becoming caught in a game of “endless ping-pong” between Greek and Albanian border police, Grimheden told BIRN: “We have seen and in some locations still see migrants being forced back and forth across borders in different locations in Europe. This is certainly problematic and the parts where Frontex can or can try to influence this, we have taken measures. But the issue is typically far from Frontex involvement”.
“We see a number of concerns in several countries that we are operating in, and Albania is one of those. Some countries are more open about addressing identified problems and others less so, at least Albania belongs to the group that is not ignoring the problems.”
Albania: ‘No irregular migrant is pushed back’
Albanian authorities deny engaging in pushbacks. According to Albania’s Law on Aliens, anyone entering irregularly can be expelled, particularly if they intend only to transit across Albania. Data from the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, shows that in 2023, only 6.5 per cent of 4,307 apprehended migrants were referred to the asylum procedure.
According to Serious Incident Reports seen by BIRN, groups of migrants and refugees are regularly apprehended either at the border or deep inside Albanian territory, taken to temporary holding facilities, transferred to nearby border crossing points, and told to cross back into Greece on foot.
In all but one case, the Albanian authorities responded that the groups had been pre-screened – taking their basic information and making an initial assessment of their need for asylum – and served with removal orders.
Neither the Greek Ministry of Citizens Protection nor Albania’s Ministry of Interior or General Directorate of Border Police responded to requests for comment.
However, in exchanges with the FRO reviewed by BIRN, Albanian authorities rejected claims of systematic pushbacks.
“No irregular migrant is pushed back,” the Albanian Ministry of Interior replied to the FRO in exchanges reviewed by BIRN. There was only one case in which four Albanian officers were found to have “led” a group of migrants back towards Greek territory and the officers were punished, it said.
However, an investigation by the FRO, circulated in October 2023, said allegations of systematic pushbacks were “corroborated by all interviewed Frontex operational staff”.
Intense discussions within Frontex about underreported violations
In contrast to the widespread use of violence documented by the FRO in Frontex operations in Bulgaria or neighbouring Greece, most SIRs analysed by BIRN did not contain evidence of force being used by Albanian border police during alleged pushbacks, nor the direct involvement of Frontex personnel.
One exception was a letter sent in August 2022 to the FRO by a Frontex officer serving in the Kakavije border region of southern Albania. The officer accused a Frontex colleague of mistreating two migrants by “hanging them” out of his vehicle while driving them.
The letter states that upon being confronted about the incident, the officer in question laughed and claimed he had the protection of important people at Frontex HQ in Warsaw.
Following up on the letter, the FRO found that despite the incident being “widely discussed” within the pool of Frontex officers on the ground, “no Serious Incident was reported, and no information was shared with the operational team”.
The Frontex Press Office told BIRN that the officer involved was dismissed from the Frontex operation and his actions reported to his home country.
The incident “served as a vital lesson and is now used in briefings for new officers to underscore the high standards expected of them”, the press office said.
In his February 2023 email to Kalnaja, FRO head Grimheden urged her “send a message in the organisation that SIRs need to be issued when they become aware of possible fundamental rights situations – no excuses”.
It is not clear from the documentation BIRN obtained whether Kalnaja, as acting Frontex head, responded to Grimheden’s email. She was replaced 12 days later when Hans Leijtens took on the leadership of Frontex as Leggeri’s successor.
According to internal documents seen by BIRN, the issue of non-reporting of rights violations has been the subject of intense discussions within the Frontex Management Board, the agency’s main decision-making body, since at least September 2023.
In January this year, the FRO issued a formal opinion on “addressing underreporting” to the Board, essentially flagging it as a serious issue beyond only Frontex operations in Albania.
