Frontex is building an ‘AI chatbot app’ to encourage repatriations

The Border Agency of the European Union, Frontex, is building a mobile application for individuals who are voluntarily or forcibly deported from Europe, as part of its EU Reintegration Programme (EURP).

The application will come equipped with an ‘AI chatbot’ feature, which allows deportees to learn about the available services within the program, such as the opening hours of the nearest return counseling centers, or the financial incentives offered to individuals who accept to travel back to their country of citizenship (given the relative lack of choice people face, some scholars prefer the term ‘self-deportation’).

A design mockup of the AI chatbot feature within the Frontex’ RRApp.

According to internal documents obtained by AlgorithmWatch, the AI chatbot will be trained on data compiled by Frontex’ Return Knowledge Office, a unit set up in 2024 within the agency in charge of the so-called digitization of returns – the EU’s preferred term for deportations.

The exact scope of the information the chatbot will have access to remains unclear. Presentation documents listed “what kind of help can I receive upon my return” and “what legal procedures must I follow when returning” as the questions users will be encouraged to ask.

Despite being trained solely on material in English, the AI-powered chatbot is expected to respond to queries in many other languages, including Arabic, Urdu and Pashto.

Mockup of Frontex’ Return and Reintegration App (RRApp) start screens.

The internal documents were obtained through a series of Freedom of Information requests, submitted in May and November of last year. AlgorithmWatch contacted Frontex for comment but no reply was received in time for publication.

Automated counseling

The EU Border Agency provides financial and operational support to EU countries to facilitate deportations. This comes in the form of charter flights for forced deportations funded and organized by Frontex. It also involves the deployment of return counseling officers throughout the EU to encourage non-EU nationals to go back to their countries of origin voluntarily.

In 2025, Frontex’ officers conducted 17,809 counseling sessions in 15 different countries, including inside immigration detention facilities. 42% of these sessions resulted in a “declaration to return voluntarily,” according to data shared by the agency last month. It also trained some 139 officers from national authorities in return counseling in the same year.

Return counseling services have historically been provided by local civil society organizations and IOM, the UN Migration Agency. In recent years, these services have been taken over by state authorities instead. Existing research suggests that the exclusion of NGOs from return counseling is negatively impacting the “voluntariness” of the return decisions.

Slide from a presentation on Fundamental Rights, as part of the Frontex training curriculum for Return Counselors.

No high-risk use of AI

It is not clear whether Frontex has fully assessed the potential impact of its mobile application on deportees, according to the internal documents obtained by AlgorithmWatch.

Frontex’ Fundamental Rights Office (FRO), which is in charge of upholding fundamental rights at the agency, conducted a review of the project. Despite the app’s potentially providing legal advice, it found that the application presented no “high-risk use of AI,” as defined in the recently passed AI Act. An assessment of the application’s impact on fundamental rights was therefore not necessary.

“We do not have specific fundamental rights concerns, apart from the already discussed issue of integrating the Complaints mechanism in the App,” an official from the FRO wrote in an email in May 2025.

Two months later, in July 2025, the FRO issued its full opinion on the chatbot feature, which included some 28 recommendations. The first recommendation was to “develop a more solid theoretical framework to support the argument that access to information increases the rate of voluntary returns.”

Mixed feelings

The development of the application, and its maintenance, are set to cost €500,000. Polish IT software development company Fabrity was selected in December 2024 for the job, according to a copy of the contract order obtained by AlgorithmWatch. For the chatbot itself, Fabrity uses an off-the-shelf language model which will be “simply fed with a set of data,” according to a company representative in an e-mail to Frontex.

At least one European country is opposed to the project, according to minutes from a January 2025 meeting of Frontex’ management board.

The management board is made up of representatives – generally from law enforcement agencies – of all EU Member states, plus four Schengen area countries. Frontex’ executive director, as well as his deputies, answer directly to the management board.

The mobile application project was presented during the January meeting by Frontex Deputy Executive Director Lars Gerdes as part of a series of measures to increase the number of deportations.

According to the minutes, Gerdes introduced the project as “a mobile application for alternatives to detention”.

One member of the board expressed concerns about the project, calling into question “the efficiency of [a] new app for returns”, according to the same minutes.

However, this position seems to be in the minority among the board. Interventions from other attendees of the meeting show that most support the ongoing efforts of digitizing deportations.

Outside of the boardroom, meanwhile, the application is seen as a simple “quick-win, low-cost project with only few resources involved,” as an officer from Frontex’ Return Knowledge Office noted in an email. But that could change depending on how a new EU regulation for Frontex – reportedly already in the works in Brussels – will look like.

“We all hope that the new regulations will provide us with the legal basis to allow us to develop more powerful and integrated IT systems,” the officer wrote in the same email.