The month of January saw the number of illegal border crossings into the European Union jump by nearly 80% compared to those witnessed last year, Frontex, the bloc’s border agency has revealed.
Frontex, the agency tasked with controlling the borders of the European Schengen Zone, published a press release on Tuesday that revealed the number of illegal migrants arrivals climbed to 13,160 in the first month of 2022, up 78% from last January and 23% from January 2020—two months before the WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic
Although the European Union’s external land border in the East saw a notable decrease in illegal arrivals compared to the previous January, migrant crossings into the bloc by way of the Western Balkan and Central Meditteranean routes increased sharply, up 148% and 107%, respectively.
“Syria, Afghanistan, and Turkey were the top three countries of origin of migrants” who used the Western Balkan route, according to the report.
Regarding the Central Mediterranean route, the stretch of sea between Italy and North Africa, two of three migrants who successfully made landfall departed from Libya, with the rest coming from Tunisia.
The EU border agency’s report comes just days after the Italian Interior Ministry released national figures which showed that illegal migrant arrivals have increased by nearly 200% last month, compared to January of 2021, as The European Conservative previously reported.
Similarly, migration from the coast of West Africa to the Spanish Canary Islands—one of the most perilous migratory routes in the world—increased considerably, at 50 percent, with more than 3,000 illegal arrivals recorded, more than half of whom were Moroccan nationals. Conversely, the number of migrants traveling on the Western Mediterranean route—the narrow straight between the eastern part of the North African coastline and Spain’s Mediterranean coast—fell slightly, at 32%.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Mediterranean route—the stretch of sea that lies between the coastlines of Turkey and Greece—did not witness any drastic changes in the flow of migration, with the number of recorded arrivals having increased by 28% year over year.
The route to Cyprus, however, saw a noteworthy increase from last January, with 850 migrants arriving on the island illegally, a 48% jump. Earlier this month, Nicholas Liasides, the major of Chlorka, a Cypriot village that has a population of just 4,420 people, lamented that the town had become a “ghetto,” pleading with the central government to distribute the asylum seekers across the island.
On Thursday, weeks after Cypriot Interior Minister Nicos Nouris called on the EU to assist with repatriations amid overcrowding of its migrant facilities, Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri traveled to the Eastern Mediterranean island nation to assess the situation and meet with officials, pledging to facilitate returns of rejected asylum seekers.
