to operate within countries without the consent of the individual nation, may
initially appear to be a paradigmatic example of the erosion of national
sovereignty in favour of globalised, collective decision making. States who wish
to have a less securitised approach to border operations may no longer be able,
with border policy and implementation partially taken out of their hands. If these
states were to refuse to comply with this approach – though this has not yet
been implemented on any EU member state – Frontex will be deployed to
temporarily take control of the member’s borders until a change in policy has
been agreed upon, or, if the state rejects this, neighbouring EU members will be
required to close their borders to the ‘offending’ country (Deleixhe & Duez,
2019).
However, as previously mentioned, globalisation and the operations of
international institutions are not done to states existing as inert actors. The
document produced by the European Union regarding the increase of Frontex
powers states that the change was proposed by the European Council (Council
of the European Union, 2016) – the entity that is composed of heads of state of
EU member countries. Evidently, the majority of nation-states within the EU do
not view Frontex as contradictory to their roles regarding migration control
within their countries, but rather, complimentary to it. The organisation has seen
an increase of funding since its inception, from €6 million in 2005 to €320 million
in 2018 (Frontex, 2022), an increase that was granted with the approval of the
European Council (European Parliament & European Council, 2019). The internal
free movement area of the European Union, along with Frontex, do in theory
take the ability to fully protect borders away from its member states. However,
the fact that article 19.6 regarding Frontex’s ‘right to intervene’ has not yet been
applied suggests that border policy of European nations does match up with that
of the EU – whose policy the heads of state have aided in creating and
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