Luděk Stavinoha

It's more than 3 years since Frontex Executive Director promised to make the EU border agency more transparent. We're all still waiting...

...and waiting...

"What we see, we pass on". And that's precisely the problem. That's precisely how Frontex becomes routinely complicit in a regime of deadly pushbacks and pullbacks, as documented by the agency itself. Detect, alert, share, and, occasionally, drown, would be be a more accurate motto.

My book, Unruly Subjects, is out with @manchesterup.bsky.social 📘✨ For the last decade, I’ve been researching Europe’s border struggles in Greece, in the Aegean archipelago. It's a look at how people - citizens and non-citizens - carve out spaces of hope amidst state violence and abandonment. (1/4)

It's about the transformation of the Aegean into Europe's carceral archipelago. Amidst the 'death worlds' of Moria, it's about the stubborn refusal to accept the disposability of the lives of others. And it's about the way these spaces of unruly solidarity are now being policed and eviscerated (4/4)

My book, Unruly Subjects, is out with @manchesterup.bsky.social 📘✨ For the last decade, I’ve been researching Europe’s border struggles in Greece, in the Aegean archipelago. It's a look at how people - citizens and non-citizens - carve out spaces of hope amidst state violence and abandonment. (1/4)

Told through the testimonies of those warehoused in EU-funded refugee camps and the thousands of ordinary citizens who set up vital infrastructures of support, the book is about the lived experiments in solidarity - precarious, fraught, ambivalent - that emerged on the Greek islands in 2015. (2/4)

Delighted to read in Europol's internal correspondence that a certain "researcher & journo" (👀) "appears" merely "to be dissatisfied"; that there is "no issue" in the way the agency handles FOI requests. Let's review the record of just one recent complaint, shall we?

Still "no issue"?

Delighted to read in Europol's internal correspondence that a certain "researcher & journo" (👀) "appears" merely "to be dissatisfied"; that there is "no issue" in the way the agency handles FOI requests. Let's review the record of just one recent complaint, shall we?

Protecting internal decision-making processes? Nope.

Delighted to read in Europol's internal correspondence that a certain "researcher & journo" (👀) "appears" merely "to be dissatisfied"; that there is "no issue" in the way the agency handles FOI requests. Let's review the record of just one recent complaint, shall we?

Safeguarding "frank, objective and comprehensive legal advice"? "...the Ombudsman considered that they do not appear to contain legal advice...and that it was thus unclear why Europol relied on this exception to redact the relevant parts of the meeting minutes."

Delighted to read in Europol's internal correspondence that a certain "researcher & journo" (👀) "appears" merely "to be dissatisfied"; that there is "no issue" in the way the agency handles FOI requests. Let's review the record of just one recent complaint, shall we?

In fact, the EO found that Europol had wrongly invoked every single legal exception codified in the EU's transparency Regulation 1049/2001, when refusing to grant access to the full minutes of its Management Board. www.ombudsman.europa.eu/nl/decision/...

Delighted to read in Europol's internal correspondence that a certain "researcher & journo" (👀) "appears" merely "to be dissatisfied"; that there is "no issue" in the way the agency handles FOI requests. Let's review the record of just one recent complaint, shall we?

Last year, Frontex director Hans Leijtens said he was getting "impatient" with Greece's human rights track record. W/ @grillmeier.bsky.social, we found that, since then, continuous reports of violent pushbacks have led to no meaningful action from the EU border agency. www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decod...

"Greek authorities feel completely safe, not implementing recommendations, because I think they're quite assured that Frontex will stay" - MEP @tinekestrik.bsky.social, member of the LIBE Committee tasked with scrutinising Frontex, told us. www.lemonde.fr/article-offe...

Last year, Frontex director Hans Leijtens said he was getting "impatient" with Greece's human rights track record. W/ @grillmeier.bsky.social, we found that, since then, continuous reports of violent pushbacks have led to no meaningful action from the EU border agency. www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decod...

Excessive delays, redactions, refusals - there are not many wins in the struggle to make Europol more transparent. But, after years of legalistic gaslighting, Europol now finally acknowledges that its interpretation of EU law was erroneous all along; and has vowed to amend its internal FOI rules.

Just when you think you've seen all the absurdities from Frontex's 'transparency' office...you learn that the EU border agency is fighting 'criminals' by redacting sub-heading (of the minutes of its Fundamental Rights Compliance Panel). Orwell wept, once again.