AYS Daily Digest 02/12/2020: David vs. Goliath / Transparency activists vs. Frontex
By: Are You Syrious
Tags: Refugees, Europe, Digest, Winter, Frontex

AYS Daily Digest 02/12/2020: David vs. Goliath / Transparency activists vs. Frontex

Frontex is taken transparency activists to court to enforce payment of legal bill // Shipwreck off Lesvos: one woman drowned, one missing // New testimony of pushback in Aegean // Tactics to prevent illegal pushbacks // Happening now: families with children with no place to go in BiH // British immigration minister refuses to rule out to use of inhumane tactics against refugees // Senegal: Father of dead boy taken to court // Are You Syrious? Follow Dec 3, 2020 · 11 min read

Winter is here in Bosnia, where camps have no hot water and at least 3,000 people do not even have a place in the camp but sleep rough; among them there are families. Copyright: Transbalkanska Solidarnost

FEATURE: Frontex is using bully-boy tactics to intimidate transparency activists

No day without news from Frontex. This time, they are taking two freedom-of-information activists to court in order to force them to pay a legal bill for almost €24,000. Luisa Izuzquiza and Arne Semsrott lost their case against Frontex in November 2019, when they sued for the disclosure of the name, flag and type of each vessel deployed by Frontex in the central Mediterranean under Joint Operation Triton. Frontex refused, citing public security, although they had already shared a lot of the information in question publicly on their twitter account prior to the activist’s request. The General Court of the European Union however agreed with Frontex. Following the decision, Frontex sent the activists a bill for over €23,700 to to cover the expenses for top lawyers. Izuzquiza and Semsrott decided not to pay, but instead started a petition that reached 87,000 signatures in which they asked Frontex to withdraw the demand for reimbursement. In the text of the petition, the transparency activists stated:

“It is unusual for European authorities to respond to a request for information with an invoice at all, and certainly not in this amount. As an expression of democracy, it is much more common that citizens do not have to pay legal fees even if they fail in court.”

FragDenStaat, the NGO behind the activists, has published up to 1000 texts about Frontex — some of them proving the agency’s involvement in human rights violations. In light of Frontex’s billions of euros budget, it is quite obvious what they are aiming for when insisting on the payment: They want to prevent activists from suing them for disclosure of information in the future. In Tuesday’s hearing of Frontex director Fabrice Leggeri before the EU’s LIBE Committee, chair Lopez Aguilar reminded Leggeri of his obligations concerning transparency regarding potential human rights violations:

“Transparency means that we need to be updated and informed on your initiative on a regular basis. We shouldn’t get to know about alleged pushbacks of Frontex agency in the service of the European Union by our own means or by the media or by journalists reporting those operations but regularly by Frontex updating the LIBE committee”

Researcher Lena K. published a very informative thread on Frontex’s stand on transparency. She explains among other things how Frontex started to inform people who received access to information under the Freedom of Information principle that they needed prior authorization from Frontex when sharing this information. Frontex further introduced its own portal for launching Freedom of Information requests, and thereby restricting the use of transparency portals like asktheeu.org.