The EU's border management agency, Frontex, will open its first Operational Office in Piraeus, Greece on 1 August 2010. Although political and administrative gaps remain, the new office should enhance Frontex's role in South-Eastern Europe and help combat illegal migration in the Mediterranean, write Stavros Kourtalis and Gerasimos Tsourapas, researchers at the Hellenic Centre for European Studies (EKEM), in an exclusive commentary for EURACTIV.