On 15–16 October 2026, we took part, through attorney-at-law Desislava Todorova, an advocacy expert, in the European conference “EU Border Management and the Schengen Area” (Annual Conference on EU Border Management), organised by the Academy of European Law (ERA) in Trier, Germany.
The conference brought together representatives of the European Commission, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), including its Fundamental Rights Office, the European Union Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems (eu-LISA), Europol and European universities.
Ms Todorova was the only in-person representative of the European non-governmental sector. This highlights the deepening structural divisions between the different actors in the field of migration: state administrations, academia and non-governmental organisations. Their isolation in separate “sectoral bubbles” increasingly hampers the exchange of experience, expertise and perspectives, which is essential for developing and implementing effective, rights-based migration policies.
The main focus of the conference was on strengthening the protection of the EU’s external borders, the digitalisation of the collection and processing of data on third-country nationals, the implementation of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, and the new EU Return Regulation, which formally entered into force on 15 October 2026.
The predominant attention to border control, digital technologies and returns underlined the disproportionate allocation of financial, expert and technological resources between border management and security systems, on the one hand, and fundamental rights protection mechanisms, on the other. The latter remain in the background in practice, without sufficient resources to meet growing challenges and without sufficient powers to ensure that Member States respect fundamental human rights
