Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of Frontex's management structure from the perspective of internal monitoring and accountability systems to ensure fundamental rights compliance. It places oversight in the context of internal, within the agency itself, and external mechanisms, established under European Union (EU) law external to Frontex,1 but internal to the EU as a whole. These mechanisms are interdependent, but there has been discord among them. Nowhere is this more flagrant than in the differences of assessment between the Commission's Frontex evaluation from 20222 and the conclusions of the European Anti-fraud Office (OLAF) investigation of the same year.3 Chapter 6 develops further on the external mechanisms. Here we examine internal accountability. These two chapters focus on accountability within the EU itself rather than within European or international human rights law and structures. As with Chapter 4, the OLAF report is used to highlight problems in the internal fundamental rights monitoring mechanisms of Frontex, though the report is analysed in more detail in Chapter 6, as OLAF is an external monitoring mechanism.

An overview of the oversight mechanisms

The EU legislator has gradually included increasing oversight mechanisms, these include parliamentary, administrative and legal accountability. This was not an organic development but one which resulted from substantial concern expressed by civil society actors and academics.