EU officials meet to strengthen border agency as activists sue over alleged migrant abuses

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union officials met Thursday to strengthen border controls and curb migration as activists presented new evidence they say shows the bloc's border agency provides surveillance data to Libya's coast guard to intercept migrants at sea.

Home affairs ministers from the EU's 27 countries gathered in Luxembourg to discuss border surveillance and other policies, including setting up “ return hubs ” in third countries and efforts to increase deportations across the bloc.

Ahead of the meeting, European Commissioner for Migration Magnus Brunner said he would call for a vast expansion of Frontex , including new powers, more funding and a larger workforce.

The EU has hardened its migration policy over the past decade, with most member countries supporting more deportations and stricter border controls. The recent crisis in Ceuta — where tens of thousands of migrants arrived in the Spanish exclave in Morocco — added urgency to calls at the meeting in Luxembourg to strengthen the border agency.

“A stronger border management system is important. And there, I see a big role for Frontex,” said Belgium's Interior Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt.

Many stressed the need for Frontex to have a rapid intervention force that could intervene in border crises.

“Frontex has to play a more important role," Brunner said. And it should have “more flexibility to react to extraordinary situations like hybrid threats,” like the one seen in Ceuta.

The agency is already one of the most well funded EU organizations with a budget of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in 2026.

Speaking by video from an undisclosed location in Libya, a Sudanese refugee told a packed cafe in Brussels that Libyan authorities subject asylum-seekers and migrants there to horrific violence.

“I have tried many times to escape from here but I was not lucky because of Frontex and their allies” in Libya, said the 31-year-old refugee, whose full name was not disclosed for safety reasons.

In 2024, he sued Frontex with the help of lawyers from the legal activist group Front-LEX, the German nongovernmental organization Sea-Watch, and Refugees in Libya, an advocacy group.

“Today more than ever, Frontex, the long, violent arm of Europe, is making everything more dangerous,” said David Yambio, co-founder of Refugees in Libya. “With the help of the agency, people are captured at gunpoint and returned to Libya, a well-known place of torture, rape, enslavement, extortion, arbitrary detention, death, and enforced disappearance."

The United Nations found evidence in 2021 that crimes against humanity may have been committed against migrants in Libya. An AP investigation also documented widespread human rights violations by militias in Libya, enabled in part by EU funds .

Sea-Watch spokesperson Julia Winkler said that the group had documented Frontex sharing surveillance data with Libyan vessels more quickly and at higher resolution than what it shares with charity rescue groups operating in the Mediterranean. The Associated Press could not independently verify the claims, which Frontex denies.

Winkler said Frontex provided Libyan authorities with the coordinates of migrant boats detected by EU-funded drones and airplanes, effectively helping keep the migrants from reaching EU shores.

Human rights groups and U.N. agencies have long said Libya should not be considered a safe place to disembark migrants rescued in the Mediterranean because of the abuse they face there.

“Frontex is actively and systematically facilitating interceptions and definitely not rescue,” Winkler said. “European aerial surveillance is crucial in all of this... Without this information, the so-called Libyan coast guard would not be able to know the positions of the majority of the boats, and interceptions would not be possible on that scale.”

The Libyan coast guard and other Libyan groups operating in the Mediterranean have been accused numerous times of shooting at migrants and European charity vessels trying to rescue them.

Frontex said Thursday it does not provide information directly to the Libyan coast guard, but instead alerts an emergency rescue center in Tripoli or sends broadcasts and “mayday relays” to nearby vessels able to respond.

“If you don’t have the eyes to see boats in distress in this area, then you probably will have more lives that are being lost,” said agency spokesperson Chris Borowski. “The more Frontex planes fly in the area, the more they’re able to see and the more lives that we hope we’re able to save.”

Migrants and activists have called for these flights to be suspended and hope to advance their case before the General Court of the European Union.

The lawsuit brought forward “seeks to end this information-sharing, and thereby stop refugees from being sent back to death or torture in Libya,” said Iftach Cohen, a lawyer with the legal advocacy group Front-LEX representing the plaintiff. “No one can stop Frontex but the judges.”