The far-right MEP who headed Frontex is being investigated for complicity in crimes against humanity.

BrusselsFrench justice will investigate former Frontex director and National Rally MEP Fabrice Leggeri for complicity in crimes against humanity and torture for having carried out a "migrant hunt"The French representative, who was one of the star recruits of the far-right party led by Marine Le Pen in the previous European elections, headed the European Border and Coast Guard Agency—known as Frontex—between January 2015 and April 2022. Leggeri was repeatedly accused by several non-profit organizations of tolerating illegal pushbacks of migrants and gained a reputation for cracking down on people trying to enter the European Union. In fact, he resigned in the spring of 2022 precisely because of these accusations. However, it is only now that the French justice system has agreed to have an investigating judge look into the complaints filed by the French Human Rights League (LDH) against the far-right MEP, according to judicial sources speaking to the French news agency AFP.

Specifically, the NGO accuses the former Frontex director of having "encouraged" agents to facilitate the interception of migrant boats by Lebanese and Greek authorities, according to the complaint filed in 2024, which AFP also accessed. The LDH also accuses him of having "chosen" a migration policy that aimed to "obstruct, at any cost, even at the cost of human lives, the entry of migrants into the European Union."

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency, 82,000 migrants disappeared or died worldwide in 2014. On the Mediterranean route to Europe alone, the figure was 34,000. Furthermore, a recent report from the UN Support Mission in Libya and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights indicates that migrants "arbitrarily detained" by Lebanese security forces—Lebanese being a country to which the EU largely outsources its immigration management—are victims of "serious violations."