№88 A European Border and Coast Guard: What’s in a name?
№88 A European Border and Coast Guard: What’s in a name?

Author(s): Leonhard Den Hertog, Sergio Carrera
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences, Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence, Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Sociology, Migration Studies, EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment
Published by: CEPS Centre for European Policy Studies
Keywords: European border; Coast guard; European Border and Coast Guard;
Summary/Abstract: This paper assesses the Commission’s proposal presented in December 2015 to set up a European Border and Coast Guard (EBCG), based on the responses made by the EU border agency Frontex to the ‘refugee crisis’ that began in 2015 and continues unabated. It explores the extent to which this proposed new body will be capable of remedying the EU’s short comings in meeting established border and asylum standards and related institutional needs on the ground and concludes that it is unlikely to do so. The paper argues that the EBCG proposal does not establish a true European Border and Coast Guard. Instead it would revamp Frontex into a Frontex + Agency. The EBCG would expand the current logic of national border guards to be committed to the Frontex Agency ‘pools’ and therefore does not solve the ‘dependency’ of Frontex on member states. More importantly, the EBCG would do too little to ensure that member states comply with EU border and asylum standards, which has constituted the central deficiency throughout 2015 and earlier.

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