The EU border agency has further increased its involvement in voluntary and involuntary departures of third-country nationals. Frontex provides specialised operational staff and apps for this purpose.

The EU border agency Frontex has almost doubled the number of “returns” it supported last year compared with 2023. This emerges from an internal presentation that was shown at a meeting of a working group of EU states two weeks ago. According to the presentation, more than 63.493 people were removed from the European Union in 2025 with Frontex involvement, including more than one third under coercion. In 2023 there had been 39.231 “returns”, almost half of which were involuntary.

The presentation, entitled “Implementation of Frontex activities in the field of return”, was published by the British civil liberties organisation Statewatch. It concerns the departure of people from non-EU countries whose application for protection or asylum in the Schengen area was rejected. The presentation also refers to almost 18.000 “individual consultations” for rejected refugees; by far the largest number of these, according to information from “nd”, took place in Germany.

Further details for 2025 are listed in the document: for example, around 5.911 Syrians “voluntarily” returned with Frontex support, most of them from Cyprus (39 %) and Germany (37 %). By 24 November 2025, Frontex had taken ten people “voluntarily” to Afghanistan.

Frontex is systematically expanding its deportation activities. The core element is the “European Return Centre” at its Warsaw headquarters, which was set up after a regulatory amendment in 2019. It offers member states deportations as an all-inclusive service – “climate-neutral and, if necessary, with ‘restraint techniques’”. The centre is headed by Lars Gerdes, a former instructor with the German Federal Police, who previously led the Federal Police mission in Afghanistan and is now one of Frontex’s three deputy directors.

For the operational implementation of deportations at airports, Frontex provides three categories of personnel. According to the current report, so-called “return specialists” were involved in around 35.650 cases between 2023 and 2025. They work in EU states and are supposed to assist there, via embassies of countries of origin, among other things with obtaining travel documents.

Deportations are carried out with the help of “Return escort and support officers”, who sit on board aircraft. These members of the armed Frontex reserve supported the forced return of around 27.137 third-country nationals in the same period.

To support people who have returned voluntarily or involuntarily, Frontex also deploys so-called “European return liaison officers”, who are intended to help with integration in the country of origin. Ten of these officers were deployed in 15 third countries during the reporting period, supporting 1.457 people.

Clara Bünger, a Left Party member of the Bundestag, considers the distinction between “voluntary” and “involuntary” return of rejected refugees to be merely statistical. “Many are under massive pressure even without handcuffs: residence rights gone, work ban, reduced benefits, constant fear of arrest,” Bünger told “nd”. If the only “alternative” left is deportation, this is “not a free decision, but state-enforced ‘voluntariness’”. Those affected often do not even know what they are signing because of poor translations. “Anyone who does not understand documents cannot give voluntary consent,” said the Bundestag parliamentary group’s spokesperson on refugee policy.

By the meeting of EU interior ministers on 13 March 2026, Frontex intends to analyse its statistics on “returns” in even greater detail. So far, according to its own information, the border agency handles around 45 per cent of all roughly 130.000 deportations from the EU – a figure that is to be increased further. Frontex also announced two new app projects for this purpose: an application to check needs of protection of asylum seekers, and an application called “RECAPP”, which is apparently intended to coordinate “returns”.

For the rapid registration and screening of arriving people seeking protection, Frontex tested a new “screening toolkit” on Lampedusa in autumn together with Europol. A new routine tested there for establishing identity through the provision of biometric data is intended to support the authorities in implementing the new Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and the EU Screening Regulation it contains. The measure targets third-country nationals who have crossed the external border in an “unauthorised manner” or people who are brought ashore after sea rescue operations.

Published in German in „nd“.

Image: The “Return Centre” headed by a federal police officer offers deportations as an all-inclusive service – “climate-neutral and, if necessary, with ‘restraint techniques’” (X/ Frontex).