Leggeri was the embattled executive director of Frontex. He has now been elected to the European Parliament for the Rassemblement national. There he wants to fight for tougher asylum rules and is preparing for a presidency under Marine Le Pen.
Fabrice Leggeri has not reconciled himself with his old adversary. When the former Executive Director of Frontex talks about Ylva Johansson, the Swedish Commissioner for Refugees, his face twists. And then he tells how she once tried to dissuade him from buying uniforms for his employees. “Mr. Leggeri,” she said to me, “why do you need weapons and uniforms? The refugees come out of love!””
His forced resignation as head of the border protection agency; his battles with the Commission; the investigations into him by the anti-fraud agency Olaf – all of this could have led Leggeri to turn his back on the EU apparatus forever. But since Sunday it has been clear that voters have elected him to the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg for the Rassemblement national (RN), France’s largest opposition party.
Switched to the other side
The ousted top official will therefore be able to do things in the future that were previously forbidden to him. For example, he will be able to summon EU commissioners and possibly initiate investigations in Parliament. Is he considering taking revenge on the people who made his life difficult back then? “I wouldn’t say that I want revenge. But I can help improve the European Union,” says the 56-year-old.
We meet Leggeri in a Brussels café during the European elections. With the RN’s third place on the list, his election is a formality. Marine Le Pen’s party celebrated his appointment as a coup. After all, in their eyes, Leggeri is not only an intimate connoisseur of Brussels bureaucracy, having headed the EU’s largest agency for seven years. He also presents himself as an expert in migration policy who – if left-wing NGOs had not constantly hindered his work – would have protected Europe’s borders much better.
How did he come to enter politics? Leggeri says that a few weeks after resigning from Frontex in June 2022, he was visited by a group of RN MPs. The politicians asked him about the migration crisis, and one of them, Jordan Bardella, the party’s young and charismatic top candidate, left a lasting impression on Leggeri: “Very polite and hardworking!”
Discreet meeting in Paris
At a private party, he then made a chance acquaintance with Marc Baudriller, a Catholic-conservative journalist with excellent connections to the Rassemblement national. Baudriller organized a meeting with Le Pen, and at some point the figurehead of the French right and the former Frontex boss sat together for a discreet lunch in Paris. The idea of welcoming the “defender of the external border” into the party – and perhaps keeping him warm as a minister for the period after the presidential election in France in 2027 – took shape.
Has he always been a supporter of Le Pen? “I voted for her in 2022, but I liked her ideas even before that,” says Leggeri. “I was always conservative, but a normal conservative.” From the perspective of the new MEP, the RN is not a radical, but a sensible conservative force that is fighting for a very different EU: less influence for the institutions in Brussels, more power for the nation state, a “Europe of fatherlands”. Politics should also be less “woke”, both at national and European level.
Fabrice Leggeri, the son of an Italian immigrant, was born in Alsace in 1968. He had a successful school and civil service career in the capital: first in the French Ministry of the Interior, then for a time as an expert at the Commission in Brussels. Together with colleagues, he proposed to the Commission in 2002 that a European border guard be set up. Two years later, Frontex was founded, and after eleven years Leggeri was appointed its head.
In 2015, the first year of the refugee crisis, the EU set about expanding the agency and extending its mandate. The aim was to provide better support to national authorities at the external borders. Leggeri’s new post was politically highly exposed from the start; migration policy polarized Brussels and the discussions were often emotional.
Power struggle with the Commission
Then, in 2020, the bombshell exploded. A media report accused Frontex of carrying out the illegal pushbacks of migrants in the Aegean Sea. Videos appeared that seemed to prove this, and the director quickly came under fire: he, it was alleged, had covered up the incidents. Leggeri dismisses this. He describes the reports as fake and says: “Turkey was behind it, a number of Soros journalists and, of course, certain NGOs.”
The scandal escalated quickly. For a simple reason, Leggeri believes. The Commissioner for the Interior wanted to oust him as executive director. “It was a power struggle.” And for ideological reasons: “She saw a potential racist perpetrator behind every one of my armed officers.”
This spring, the EU tightened its asylum policy. Procedures are to be carried out and accelerated at the external borders, and returns are to be carried out consistently. Surely that should be to Leggeri’s liking? He shakes his head. This is not a real improvement. The journeys to the European external borders will continue, the smuggling gangs will profit from it and migrant boats will sink at sea. “Nothing will change the fact that over 300,000 migrants are walking around freely in Europe. And even though they do not have refugee status, they are not returning to their country of origin.”
What does the MEP suggest? In the countries of origin, says Leggeri, European consulates should carry out the asylum procedures. This would be possible if they were given more staff and the European Asylum Agency was delegated to strengthen them. Those who really need protection would then be able to enter legally. “And of course we must close the external borders to illegal immigrants.”
He is skeptical about the British “Rwanda model,” which seeks to conduct asylum procedures exclusively in a third country. It is difficult to implement and very expensive. “But we are monitoring it.” He believes that the consular procedures, on the other hand, have the support of a majority. At Denmark’s initiative, 15 member states have made a corresponding proposal to the Commission. Leggeri’s migration concepts do not seem extreme. They could well have come from a center-right politician, perhaps even from Commission President von der Leyen?
The West in danger?
Leggeri’s expression darkens when the conversation turns to his former boss and the proceedings that were brought against him at the end of 2020. It began with an office raid by Olaf, the EU’s anti-fraud agency. “This happened without a court order, without anything – what a rule of law!” says Leggeri.
Olaf accused him of misconduct, harassment and covering up criminal offenses. All of these allegations were fabricated and refuted, says Leggeri, and in the end nothing will stick with him. “But during that time I realized that the EU had become not only my political enemy, but also my personal enemy.” After a grueling year, he resigned in April 2022.
“You know, there is more at stake in Europe now than just the EU. It doesn’t matter whether we change a few laws here: we are in a clash of cultures.” Leggeri believes that Western civilisation is facing a coalition of enemies, among them the “woke” ideologues who are destroying the continent from within.
“If we don’t fight now, we will very quickly be replaced by other peoples – that’s the plan!” Whose plan? “The migrants’ plan.” Isn’t that the new right conspiracy theory of the “great population exchange”, Mr Leggeri? “We in the RN don’t use that term, we talk about the flood of migrants,” he replies. “And we want France to remain France.”