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Is irregular migration to the EU really on the rise?
euronews (in English)
Follow
09/10/2024
It’s a common claim bandied about by far-right MEPs as the immigration debate grows ever more toxic. But do the figures match the rhetoric?
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00:00
Is irregular migration to the EU really on the rise?
00:08
It's a common claim bandied about by far-right MEPs and other European politicians,
00:13
and it seems to be growing ever more toxic.
00:16
However, the figures appear to tell a different story.
00:22
Irregular crossings over the EU's southern borders,
00:25
which typically see the most migration of this kind,
00:28
are down by 35% from January to August,
00:31
according to the UN's International Organization for Migration.
00:35
Some 115,000 unauthorized migrants,
00:38
representing less than 0.03% of the EU's population,
00:42
have come to the EU this year via the Mediterranean or Atlantic,
00:46
down from 176,252 in the same period last year.
00:52
To put that in perspective, more than one million entered the EU in 2015,
00:56
at the height of the migrant crisis.
00:58
The EU's own data shows a similar trend.
01:01
Frontex, the bloc's border agency,
01:03
said that unauthorized crossings from the south have fallen by 39% overall this year,
01:08
compared to 2023.
01:10
Migrants most commonly use the route from North Africa
01:12
across the central Mediterranean to Italy,
01:15
yet about 64% fewer people use the route this year than in 2023.
01:19
Yet it has to be said that the figures for individual routes
01:22
are not the same across the board.
01:24
The second most used route is the eastern Mediterranean,
01:27
with migrants arriving in Greece.
01:29
Numbers here rose by 57% in the first eight months of the year,
01:33
with smuggling networks using speedboats
01:35
and other aggressive methods to counter the Coast Guard.
01:38
The Atlantic route from West Africa to Spain's Canary Islands
01:42
is the third most used route, and its use has more than doubled this year.
01:46
According to the UN, more than 25,000 migrants
01:49
from the likes of Mali and Senegal landed there at the end of August.
01:53
For more details, take a look at our website, euronews.com.
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