On 10 June 2025, the Frontex Consultative Forum on Fundamental Rights published its twelfth Annual Report. The report outlines the main observations and recommendations that the Consultative Forum shared with Frontex and its management board throughout 2024, with the aim of strengthening the protection of fundamental rights in the agency’s activities.

In 2024, the Consultative Forum visited Frontex operations in Cyprus, Albania, Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Serbia. It provided advice on identifying vulnerable persons in Frontex VEGA operations and on revising the relevant handbooks. The Forum also advised on fundamental rights through the Fundamental Rights Guidance Board of the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS). Lastly, it gave fundamental rights training advice and contributed to Frontex policy documents and operational tools.

The report highlights two major challenges for the Consultative Forum: (1) there is limited engagement with its advice by parts of the agency beyond the Academy and Return Unit; (2) after submitting input to the agency, the Forum typically receives little information about subsequent steps in the process or the extent to which its advice was considered by Frontex entities. It also finds that gaps remain in fully integrating fundamental rights measures and operation-specific actions into operational plans, as well as in monitoring and safeguarding their implementation by Member States. The Consultative Forum expresses concern about emerging court cases that confirm fundamental rights violations linked to the agency’s failure to take the Fundamental Rights Officer’s opinions into account when introducing conditionalities and safeguards.

Looking ahead, the report underscores that the entry into operation of the Entry-Exit System (EES), which will be followed by the implementation of ETIAS and of the new Eurodac Regulation, will mark a crucial step in the EU's border management with the use of many new technologies, such as biometric identity registration and screening. These technologies will not only offer opportunities to streamline processes, but have also wide-ranging human rights implications, including many related to data protection and privacy rights, which need to be thoroughly assessed and analysed before deployment and during implementation. The Forum’s work programme for the year 2025 is annexed to the annual report.