The leadership of one of the Frontex contingents will be based in Prague
Prague – In Prague, the leadership of one of the contingents of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) will be based from next year. It will manage the activities of hundreds of agency police officers operating mainly at airports in ten countries that do not have a land border with non-EU member states. The contingent was established this January, and its leadership is currently temporary in the Czech capital. After today’s ceremonial event, the coordinator of the National Contact Point for Frontex, Jiří Perníček, told reporters.
The aim of establishing a headquarters in the Czech Republic is to transfer management from the headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, to the regions. There are seven contingents, each with leadership in a different city. The sixth contingent, managed from Prague, includes not only police officers from the Czech Republic but also their colleagues from Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, France, Ireland, Iceland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. “We mainly consider it important that decisions about missions and the deployment of human and technical resources for certain states will be made directly from the territory of a member state,” said police president Martin Vondrášek to reporters.
“Thanks to this deployment, the management of these contingents will be significantly closer to the performance of service,” Vondrášek stated. According to him, the previous way of managing all activities from one center was complicated. Therefore, the Czech Republic supported the change and sought to have one of the agency’s headquarters in the country. According to the agency’s executive director Hanse Leijtense, the establishment of contingents is a new chapter for Frontex. Another challenge is to have 10,000 police officers in the agency by 2027.
According to Vondrášek, the Czech Republic regularly sends about 140 police officers on Frontex missions each year. There are 25 Frontex police officers operating at Prague Airport. “This may have been the precursor to the contingent’s headquarters here, because we were very active as Prague Airport. We let them do their job, we let them perform directly, process passengers, and Frontex had no problem providing us with their experts,” explained Perníček. The so-called airport contingent now consists of about two hundred police officers, and their number will increase in the near future. The section is responsible for about 25 to 30 airports and also works on maritime borders.
In Prague, according to Perníček, there will be personnel officers, analysts, and other employees. The contingent should thus be completely independent. “Since January of this year, the contingent has had a temporary headquarters here, which is expected to transform into a so-called antenna office in January next year. This is the logistical and managerial headquarters of the entire contingent,” the coordinator stated. (July 25)
