BORDER MANAGEMENT EU Court of Auditors finds transparency issues in Frontex finances A recent report from the EU Court of Auditors into Frontex’s finances highlights gaps in the agency’s financial reporting. For instance, Frontex was reported to only provide global budgets with no data disaggregated by operation. Besides transparency issues, the report finds that the agency has failed to deliver in the areas of information exchange, vulnerability assessments and operational response. While this report does not look into alleged pushbacks and other violations by Frontex, a forthcoming report on returns and readmission of irregular migrants, set for September 2021, may cover rights violations as well. Former Frontex deputy director admits agency’s indifference to human rights violations In a recent interview in The Guardian, former Frontex deputy director Gil Arias Fernández paints a bleak picture of the EU border agency. In particular, the former official said that while he does not believe Frontex engaged proactively in human rights violations, at the very least the agency “turned a blind eye on them”. Arias Fernández pointed to the lack of mechanisms in the recruitment system to adequately filter out extremist people, as well as to the lack of human rights training for the agency’s personnel.