European Union sees highest unauthorized migrant crossings since 2015 crisis
Jack Birle
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The European Union has seen the highest number of unauthorized migrant entries since 2016, during the end of the 2015 European migrant crisis.
Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, says there were 330,000 irregular border crossings in 2022, a nearly 64% increase from 2021. The roughly 330,000 unauthorized migrants are separate from the 13 million Ukrainian refugees who escaped into EU countries.
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Most of the border crossings came from the Western Balkan route, where 145,600 people crossed the border irregularly, a 136% increase from 2021. The second highest number of entries came from the Central Mediterranean route, where 102,529 of the irregular border crossings came from, an increase of 56% from 2021.
The majority of those crossing from the Western Balkan route came from Syria, Afghanistan, and Turkey. Nearly 80% of migrants who travel via the Mediterranean route come from Northwest African countries, according to the agency.
“Last year, EU and Schengen-associated countries faced unprecedented challenges at their external borders. These have ranged from the state-organized migration perpetrated by Belarus from 2021 onward to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The latter caused record numbers of refugees arriving in the European Union,” the agency said.
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The least popular route for irregular border crossings was from the Eastern Land Border near Belarus and Russia, where only 6,127 people crossed.
The 2022 end-of-year figures mark a second straight increase in the number of “irregular border crossings,” but the numbers are still a fraction of the more than 1.8 million migrants who entered the EU in 2015.