Former EU border force chief and current Member of European Parliament Fabrice Leggeri faces a judicial investigation in France over complaints logged by far-left open borders activists over alleged pushbacks of migrant boats in the Mediterranean.
In the latest apparent lawfare drive against those who seek to protect Europe’s borders from illegal immigration, the Paris Court of Appeal will reportedly investigate former Frontex boss Fabrice Leggeri for alleged “crimes against humanity”, Le Monde reported.
According to the Parisian paper, the investigation was launched on the back of a complaint from the pro-mass migration non-profits Utopia 56 and the Human Rights League (LDH) in April of 2024.
The NGOs accused Leggeri, during his tenure as the head of the Frontex EU border force, of having helped orchestrate and then potentially cover up the coordinated pushback of illegal migrant boats by Greek officials to Turkey, and similar pushbacks of migrant boats attempting to reach Italy by the Libyan coast guard.
The complaint reportedly stated that Leggeri did so “by failing to oppose the crimes committed by the Libyan and Greek coast guards, by concealing evidence of these crimes, and by providing logistical and financial support for their execution”.
They further accused Leggeri of having set out “an especially strict policy clearly aimed at obstructing, whatever the cost – including human lives – the entry of migrants into the European Union.”
Leggeri, who led the EU border force from 2015 to 2022, and who now sits in the European Parliament for the French anti-mass migration National Rally party, has so far not commented publicly on the reported investigation.
However, allies were quick to decry what appeared to be an attempt to criminalise the protection of Europe’s borders. Former National Rally presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said: “I extend my full support to Fabrice Leggeri, the target of this odious campaign of judicial harassment.”
“The French people who are enduring the dramatic consequences of migrant submersion will not be fooled by the crude manoeuvre of a far-left organisation that seeks to prevent and criminalise any oversight of migration policies, even though such oversight is demanded by the European peoples.”
National Rally president Jordan Bardella also decried the “judicial harassment from far-left associations,” and said: “Defending Europe’s borders against mass immigration is not a crime: it is an absolute necessity and the fundamental right of peoples.”
Leggeri, who joined the National Rally in 2024, has continued to be heavily critical of the open borders agenda favoured by elites in Europe, and has been a vocal opponent of the EU Migration Pact, which seeks to punish member states financially if they refuse to take in illegals from other member states that fail to police their borders.
The former Frontex boss is not alone in facing apparent lawfare for seeking to protect Europe’s borders. Indeed, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini was mired in court cases for years over his 2019 move to prevent an open-borders NGO from disembarking migrants on Italian shores, which opponents claimed violated EU law. Ultimately, Salvini was acquitted of all charges in December.
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