Fabrice Leggeri, former head of Frontex: “The European Commission sees illegal immigration as a project and not as a problem”
The former head of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), Fabrice Leggeri, has joined Marine Le Pen as a candidate for Rassemblement Nationale (RN) in the upcoming European elections. His candidacy will focus even more attention in these elections on the inability of the European and French elites to control the problem of illegal immigration.
All the more so after Leggeri’s statements in several interviews in the French media in recent days in which he claimed that the European Commission sees illegal immigration “as a project and not as a problem”.
The former Frontex chief, third on the list of the RN, the party now led by Jordan Bardella, resigned from his post in April 2022 when he realised, he confessed, that he no longer had the political means to carry out the mission entrusted to him by the EU: to protect Europe’s borders. “The commissioner told me: ‘Your job is to bring back migrants and welcome them back because they come for love. And whether they like it or not, we are an ageing continent and that’s why we have to let them in’,” said Leggeri, who also explained that this change in Frontex’s strategy was accentuated with the arrival of Ursula Von der Leyen as president of the European Commission in 2019.
“Faced with this new orientation and the attacks and intimidation I suffered, I realised that in order to defend my convictions and the continent from the migratory onslaught, I had to get involved in politics myself,” he explained.
His management of the European agency – from 2015 to 2022 – caused him to come under fire from NGOs and the left, who considered his administration to be “too firm”. Leggeri was even investigated by the European Anti-Fraud Office, which accused him of the irregular return of migrants.
“Because I wanted to control immigration, I was put under pressure and I felt a generalised abandonment. The French government put pressure on me to resign. Germany was not willing to support me. The European Commission, clearly hostile to me, wanted me to leave. In addition, I faced attacks from various lobbies and NGOs, acting against the sovereignty of states and against the will of the French and European peoples,” Leggeri complained in an interview in Le Journal du Dimanche.
His experience during seven years at Frontex convinced him of the need to oppose Von der Leyen’s Europe. “In 2019 there was a change of course, it is time to put an end to it. From now on we must fight against this European Commission that encourages and tolerates this migration collapse,” he said.
The now Le Pen’s partner, in the aforementioned interview, claims that the European Commission’s Pact on Migration and Asylum will encourage the influx of migrants and that its real aim is to distribute migrants throughout the EU and, at the same time, to financially sanction member states that refuse to do so. “What strikes me in this Migration Pact is the disregard for the sovereignty of states and the absence of concrete measures to put an end to the human trafficking that physically transports hundreds of thousands of migrants on European soil to our borders. We must become aware of the magnitude of this phenomenon and the humanitarian issues involved,” he demanded.
Leggeri made his candidacy for the European Parliament elections official on his X (formerly Twitter) account. “I am joining Jordan Bardella’s list because I want France and Europe to regain control of their borders,” he posted.
Voting intention polls for these elections show a clear advantage for the RN, with 30% of the vote, ten points ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition. The addition of Fabrice Leggeri could further increase the gap with Le Pen’s party.
