The former head of the European Union’s Frontex border enforcement agency has announced that he will run for the EU Parliament on behalf of the anti-mass migration National Rally of French populist Marine Le Pen.
In a major political coup for the National Rally (RN), former Frontex director Fabrice Leggeri, who served in the role from 2015 to 2022 before resigning over outrage from open borders advocates over reported attempts to push back boat migrants from attempting to illegally enter the EU through Greece, announced on Sunday that he would be joining the populist party.
Leggeri was quickly trotted out on the campaign trail on Monday by RN President Jordan Bardella in Alpes-Maritimes where they visited French border guards. “I join Jordan Bardella’s list because I want France and Europe to regain control of their borders. Frontex has been misguided by the European Commission, it must be restored to its role as border guard,” Leggeri said.
“We must reorient Frontex towards a mission of protecting our borders and our civilization, as Fabrice Leggeri wanted to do,” Bardella added.
The former presidential candidate for the RN, Marine Le Pen said of the party’s new candidate: “Fabrice Leggeri tried to make Frontex a coast guard agency to control illegal immigration” and that he ended up “being opposed by an ideology of welcoming migrants.”
The decision by the former Frontex director to join the National Rally for the European Parliament elections will likely serve to undercut the arguments from figures such as French President Emmanuel Macron, who has attempted to brand the populist party as “far-right” and outside the bounds of acceptable politics.
The Le Figaro French newspaper of record even declared that having a senior civil servant will serve as a “guarantee of credibility and a demonstration that the [National Rally] has become – finally – reputable.”
Leggeri said that a chief aim of his campaign will be to take on the migration pact pushed by Brussels to distribute illegal aliens throughout the bloc, causing consternation in countries such as Hungary and Poland, who have taken great pains to secure their own borders and feel that they should not have to take on the financial burden of housing illegals in their country because of the failures of other European states and indeed Frontex to protect their own borders.
Member states that refuse to take in illegals from other countries are set to face fines of up to €20,000 per migrant they decline to take in.
“With the migration and asylum pact, the Commission will encourage the migratory influx. This pact aims to distribute migrants across the EU while financially sanctioning the member states which refuse,” the former Frontex chief said, adding that the pact demonstrates “the contempt for the sovereignty of the member states and the absence of concrete measures to put an end to human trafficking.”
Leggeri will also likely put a heavy focus on his successor at the helm of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Hans Leijtens, who favours a more liberal open borders approach than his predecessor, declaring that “nothing” can stop illegal migration and therefore he sees his role as chiefly to shift the public debate around migration to become supposedly more tolerant of foreign illegals.
Under the Dutchman’s watch, illegal migration into the European Union hit its highest level since 2016 after a 17 per cent surge over the previous year. Preliminary figures released by Frontex last month said that an estimated 380,000 were recorded as having illegally entered the bloc.
National Rally President Bardella said: “We are determined to combat migratory overwhelm, which the European Commission and Eurocrats do not consider as a problem, but rather as a project.”