[Investigation] Thousands deported with Frontex help never see promised EU reintegration money

The EU’s border agency Frontex has spent millions helping deported migrants rebuild their lives outside Europe. But an investigation co-published by EUobserver reveals that the programme has been plagued by potential legal failures, promised financial aid that never reaches its recipients, and attempts to limit transparency. In October, Frontex abruptly suspended its aid programme for people deported from the EU until further notice. The suspension came after the agency blew through the budget for the programme much earlier than anticipated. Last year, as part of its EU Reintegration Programme (EURP), the agency spent €76m to provide unwanted non-EU nationals with financial assistance once they are outside the EU. This year’s spending is likely to be even higher. But the rollout of Frontex’ so-called voluntary returns, and its “flagship” EURP, has also been mired in other problems. For years, Frontex facilitated voluntary deportations of non-EU nationals without the legally required return orders. In doing so, it violated its own regulation in almost a third of the EU, according to internal documents obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. To date, the agency still lacks a formal channel for supporting people who, for example, do not receive the assistance they are promised. The internal documents also show that, in response to growing public interest in its programmes, Frontex asked national authorities to stop sharing data with journalists and researchers, potentially hindering oversight and accountability.When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the EU Border Agency said that “Frontex is committed to transparency.”“Many of the documents on which your investigation draws […] were released to you by Frontex under the EU’s access to documents rules,” the spokesperson added. Of the announced suspension, the spokesperson said it was only temporary. “The programme itself is not closing.” So-called voluntary returns are the EU’s preferred method to dispose of third-country nationals, as these deportations are significantly cheaper to arrange than forced ones. Of the 63,000 returns that Frontex facilitated in 2025, the agency considers two-thirds of them to be voluntary. Missing legal orders Frontex’ foray into voluntary returns started in 2020, after the agency’s governing text was updated to expand its mandate the year prior. The 2019 Regulation empowered Frontex to “provide assistance in relation to voluntary returns in cooperation with the member states”. This meant that national immigration authorities could now use the agency’s flight booking system to directly procure tickets for individuals who, in principle, agreed to their deportation. The Regulation also authorised the agency to start delivering assistance directly to returnees. As a consequence, the agency launched in 2022 a financial aid programme for deportees. Through EURP, Frontex has been providing thousands of euros in financial aid to deportees within six months of their expulsion. Last July, EUobserver revealed that this programme had been used to deliver assistance to at least 50 Afghans deported from the EU over the past year. According to the Frontex Regulation, the agency can only deport individuals if they are subject to a return decision - an administrative or court document ordering them to leave, which only member states can issue. A return order is necessary before a deportation because it confirms that authorities have assessed the potential risk of a pushback, which is illegal. It also allows the deportee to legally challenge their expulsion if they disagree with the authorities' assessment. Because of the missing order, Frontex could be found complicit of violating this core principle of international law - even if the returns themselves were categorised as voluntary. This legal requirement was reaffirmed in December 2025, when the Court of Justice of the EU ruled that Frontex failed to check whether a Syrian family in Greece had been issued with their return orders before deporting them. This blunder was not a one-off. In 2024, the agency realised it had been conducting its voluntary returns without the required return decisions in nine out of the 31 European countries where it operated, spanning 27 EU member states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The absence of these orders, as officials from the Commission noted during an April 2024 meeting, meant that the agency could be contravening multiple articles of its own regulation. Excerpt from a report drafted by Frontex following its April 2024 meeting. Frontex did not immediately close this legal vacuum, choosing instead to give EU countries time to adjust first - but continuing to operate its voluntary return operations in the nine countries in question until the end of the year. Finally, in April 2025, a decision from the agency’s Executive Director Hans Leitjens made the delivery of EURP support contingent on the existence of return decisions, as required by law. Rapid expansion Frontex’ flight booking system was used for the first time in a voluntary return on 14 February 2020, for one deportee from Slovenia to North Macedonia. In July 2020, charter flights were used to conduct voluntary deportations for the first time, when 209 people were flown from France to Albania over two days. Each flight cost about €49,000 - a third of what a charter forced deportation flight might cost. Frontex’ eager involvement in voluntary returns served the Commission’s goal of “increasing the number and share of [these] returns from Europe”, which it announced in a policy document in April 2021. Between 2021 and 2025, while the number of people returned as part of Frontex’ forced deportations went up by only 60%, Frontex-financed voluntary returns ballooned by almost 800%. Slide from a presentation given by Frontex in January 2024 to the Council of the EU (Source: Frontex) This growth accelerated in 2022, when the agency was put in charge of EURP. The programme aimed to establish “harmonised” rules for who was eligible to receive financial aid after their deportation from the EU, as differences in what returnees would receive post-deportation were causing “issues” onboard deportation flights. Historically, EU member states relied on the International Organisation for Migration to deliver this aid, of which the funding comes mainly from the EU’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF). Instead, Frontex contracted six international organisations to deliver the financial assistance on its behalf, including one Belgian NGO headed by British private security veterans. However, what Frontex lacked in reach, it made up for in financial resources. In 2024, the agency spent €35.3m on grants to its six EURP contractors, almost double the €19m it initially budgeted. By the end of 2024, virtually all EU countries, as well as Norway and Switzerland, were using the programme to deliver assistance to their deportees. Share of EURP expenditure, as a portion of Frontex’ spending on all deportations, from 2022 to 2025. According to Frowin Rausis, a researcher at the University of Geneva, European states seem to rely on EURP in countries of origin where bilateral return cooperation is limited and "where returns under national responsibility are politically most contested". This way, says Rausis, "countries to which people are returned avoid the domestic backlash of deportations, as their governments are not seen as failing to protect their own citizens from undignified treatment." Out of sight, out of mind Behind this facade, however, many returnees find themselves completely abandoned once they step off the plane back home. Currently, Frontex does not have a formal mechanism for handling issues from individuals who signed up to EURP - especially in cases where they do not receive the financial aid in question. Austrian newspaper Der Standard spoke to three people who have returned from Austria to Syria on flights arranged by Frontex after January 2025. None of them knew that Frontex was in charge of paying for their flight or the funding they were due to receive after. Two of them never received the assistance they say they were promised, even after they approached the national authorities that deported them. Sebastian Sperner, legal advisor at the Vienna-based migrant rights NGO Asylkoordination, said that returnees have effectively no enforceable pathway to obtain this assistance - especially once they leave EU territory. “You don’t have a legal title or a court ruling granting or guaranteeing that you should get this money. From both a legal and a factual perspective, it seems highly unlikely that such a claim could be asserted in an Austrian court,” he explained. Over the past year, Sperner’s organisation was informed of a number of cases where returnees were in a similar predicament. “I don’t see any way of actually enforcing your eligibility to get this assistance, other than pleading to the good faith of the involved actors.”“With the consent of the persons concerned,” a Frontex spokesperson said, “we can look into their cases with the Austrian authorities.” But, based on the agency’s response, keeping Frontex out of the equation seems to be by design: “People experiencing a problem with assistance they have been granted can raise it with the reintegration partner or the member state that referred them.” Meanwhile, the Austrian Ministry of Interior, which is the authority in charge of deportations in the country, did not comment on the two cases when contacted. However, the issue of non-delivery of promised EURP aid is not limited to just Austria. Out of the 8,646 Syrian nationals deported by EU countries to Syria between March 2025 and April 2026 with Frontex’ help, some 40 percent of them did not receive EURP assistance, despite €7.1m spent by the agency on their return. Syrians were only the second largest recipients of Frontex’ aid in 2025, according to a presentation given by the agency earlier this year. Excerpt from presentation given by Frontex at the informal Home Affairs meeting in January 2026 (Source: Frontex) ‘Transparency is the rule’ As part of this investigation, we asked Frontex for a breakdown of its EURP beneficiaries for the past two years, in order to determine which nationalities were predominantly impacted by missing aid delivery. The agency had previously published this data, as recently as November 2025. But in this case, the request was refused. “Frontex is not in position to provide the disaggregated data per year and nationality of a member state to the general public without explicit consent from the member state in question,” the spokesperson said in an email. The spokesperson did not provide a reason why. In reality, Frontex’ reluctance to provide cost data might to be part of a coordinated policy it developed with member states to shield themselves from scrutiny. In an internal meeting in April 2026, Frontex officers explained to their European counterparts that their ongoing collaboration in post-deportation assistance was getting a little too much attention from the public. “Frontex noted a rapid increase in Public Access to Documents (PAD) [i.e. FOI] requests concerning post-return activities, reflecting a growing public interest in the EURP,” the minutes of the meeting stated. But, while “transparency is the rule,” as the Frontex officials noted, the agency also needed to ensure that “sensitive operational data” remained protected. The agency asked all the member states in attendance, as well as the EURP NGO partners, to consult with the agency before sharing any information publicly. It also provided attendees some pointers on how to withhold data from publication. Excerpt from the minutes of the meeting of April 2026. When asked to comment, Frontex denied instructing member states to consult the agency before sharing information, stating it only “explained the access to documents rules concerning consultation on documents originating from another party”. The future ahead The European Commission is now scrambling to get an additional €50m from other sources to plug the EURP funding gap. While the EURP might be paused for the time being, the European Commission is already working on potential ways to expand the reach of Frontex’ voluntary returns programmes further. On 27 October, EU Commissioner Magnus Brunner announced a new legal framework for Frontex to facilitate deportations between countries outside the EU, “when it is in the interest of the European Union”.“Frontex will now be responsible for return-related support from A to Z, from strategic planning to cost-efficient returns, and to reintegration," Brunner said during a press conference following the announcement. Of the almost €12bn the Commission wants to set aside for Frontex in its upcoming seven-year budget, more than €2bn of it will go to finance the agency’s returns alone. But it remains unclear whether all this spending will finally satisfy the EU’s seemingly endless appetite for more deportations. This investigation was supported with a grant from Journalismfund Europe. Additional support from Laura Salzano and Hope Barker. This publication at nd.DerTag is released jointly with the Italian newspaper Altreconomia and EUobserver.