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Illegal migration into the European Union dropped in 2012 to its lowest level in four years, the bloc’s border protection agency Frontex said this week, attributing it to tougher controls but also the tapering off of the Arab Spring uprisings. |
Some 73,000 illegal border crossings were recorded last year – half of the previous year’s figure and the first time that the number dropped below 100,000 since records started being kept in 2008.
Frontex director Ilkka Laitinen credited the decrease in part to Greece more heavily policing its border with Turkey, which became one of the most important routes into the EU for illegal migrants after Frontex boosted surveillance along sea borders.
A fence covering several kilometres was erected between Greece and Turkey. Athens also deployed an extra 1,800 border police officers in the summer, along with more patrol boats on the Evros border river. Frontex officers were sent to the area too.
“(There) was a sharp drop after August 2012 at the Greek-Turkish land border. This is something that I have not seen myself before,” Laitinen said during a visit to Brussels on Thursday.
In July, 2,000 illegal crossings were still being recorded per week.
By October, they didn’t even reach 10 anymore. Frontex believes that many migrants may be waiting for the end of the special operation in the area before trying their luck again.
Also playing an important part in the drop was the fact that the EU had faced a migration influx in 2011, as pro-democracy protests and unrest spread across North Africa and the Middle East in what came to be known as the Arab Spring.
The political situation in most of those countries has since stabilised, but war-torn Syria remains a concern.
Its citizens currently constitute the second largest group of illegal migrants into the EU after Afghans.
