8 April 2025

The frequency grew in the last months of 2024 and early 2025. According to media reports, at least nine people died in the incidents, which sometimes involved gunshots fired by coast guard officers.

The coast guard claims its vessels were the ones being rammed, despite video evidence to the contrary posted online by an Austrian activist.

Shown the video, in which women and children can be heard screaming in terror, Leijtens said he agreed that Frontex’s approach to Greece so far may have contributed to “a sense of impunity”.

When Leijtens took office, Frontex already had a plan in place to help Athens improve its human rights record.

In his July 2023 letter, however, Grimheden, Frontex’s Fundamental Rights Officer, or FRO, said the plan “has not led to changes” and called for the agency to activate Article 46, the nuclear option in the Frontex arsenal. Under Article 46, Frontex should withdraw from a country if serious violations are documented in a Frontex-supported operation.

Justifying his decision not to do so, Leijtens said in English: “The FRO’s position is his, but I have to make a different consideration, and take into account what is the effect of such a decision.”

Instead, Leijtens chose “engagement”, sticking with the strategy that more Frontex, not less, was the best way to rein in the use of force at the EU’s borders.

“For me, it all starts with engagement and admitting that things are wrong,” he said, in reference to his initial thinking. Two years on, Leijtens told BIRN he had grown “impatient” with Greece, one of the countries, he said, that keeps him “awake at night”.

A “new approach” was needed, he said, one that would involve what several sources BIRN spoke to described as the “calibrated” use of Article 46 – giving Leijtens the green light to withhold financing for border hardware or withdraw resources if Greece fails to take steps to improve its approach towards the rights of migrants and refugees arriving on its shores.

Currently, Frontex has hundreds of border officers in Greece, as well as boats, cars, mobile surveillance systems, thermal cameras and drones.

The original plan was declared finished in January 2025, but Leijtens said the Greeks had implemented some of its measures only “in a formalistic manner”; cameras, for example, were installed on coast guard vessels to record potential abuses, but they weren’t turned on.

“I already told the Greeks: those remaining points are not rocket science. I want them fulfilled before we talk about the next cooperation,” said Leijtens.

“If it’s not done, I will not co-finance Greek vessels.”

He also said he had drafted an “escalation ladder” with Grimheden, setting out potential “next steps” if Greece is deemed uncooperative.

According to Frontex documents seen by BIRN, the first rung on the ‘ladder’ is communication of Frontex concerns to members states, followed by deadlines for goals to be met, then a halt to Frontex financing of hardware or staff and, finally, the termination of Frontex activities in part or in full.

“This is de facto Article 46,” Leijtens said. “I do not have to invoke Article 46; I can just make choices based on it.”