Irregular migration to EU at lowest level since 2013
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Irregular migration into the European Union has fallen to its lowest annual level since 2013, the European border and coast guard agency has said, despite a significant increase in the number of arrivals to Greece.
Overall, Afghans were the main nationality of newly arrived irregular migrants in 2019, representing almost a quarter of all arrivals. The number of Afghan migrants was nearly three times (+167%) the figure from the previous year. Roughly four out of five were registered on the Eastern Mediterranean route, while nearly all the rest on the Western Balkan route.
The most recent available data also suggest a higher percentage of women among the newly arrived migrants in 2019. In the first ten months of last year, around 23% of migrants were women compared with 19% in 2018. EU countries counted approximately 14 600 migrant children younger than 14 in the January-October period, almost one thousand more than in all of 2018.
Frontex said that according to preliminary figures for 2019, irregular crossings detected on the bloc’s external borders fell by 6% to just over 139,000 – about 92% down on the record number set during the 2015 European migration crisis.
The decline was primarily due to significant falls in the numbers of people reaching European shores via the central and western Mediterranean routes, the agency said, while the eastern Mediterranean route saw a corresponding increase.
About 14,000 people, mostly from Tunisia and Sudan, used the central Mediterranean route from north Africa – mainly Libya – to Italy and Malta, a 41% decline. Those taking the western Mediterranean route, mostly Moroccans and Algerians crossing into Spain, dropped by 58% to 24,000.
But the eastern Mediterranean route into Greece saw “growing migratory pressure” from spring until September, Frontex said, with more than 82,000 irregular migrants detected on the route in 2019 – a 46% increase on the previous year.
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The agency said arrivals via this route during the second half of last year were at their highest level since the EU signed its 2016 agreement with Ankara aimed at limiting the influx of irregular migrants entering the EU through Turkey.
