Barbed wire being installed on the Polish-Belarusian border – Maciej Luczniewski/Getty Images
Irregular border crossings into the EU fell by 42 per cent to 166,000 in the first nine months of this year, according to preliminary data collected by Frontex, the bloc’s border agency, released on Tuesday.
However, the European Union Agency for Asylum said that 513,000 asylum claims were made in the EU, Norway and Switzerland in the first half of this year.
That is on track to be the same as in 2023 when more than 1.1 million applications were made, the highest level since the 2015-2016 migrant crisis.
The data suggest that while illegal sea crossings have been curbed by EU deals with non-EU countries exchanging funding and aid for stronger policing of borders, migrants are arriving in Europe through other routes before claiming asylum.
Thursday’s European Council summit will not result in the hubs getting the immediate go-ahead because work towards potential future proposals is at a very early stage.
The proposal for migrant deportation hubs has been met with backlash by NGOs and human rights groups.
The International Rescue Committee warned that it was “a dark day for the EU’s asylum and migration policies”. Marta Welander, its EU advocacy director, said: “It’s alarming that commission president Von der Leyen is seeking to ‘draw lessons’ from this dangerous model, which must never become a blueprint for the EU’s approach to asylum and migration.
“Keeping people trapped behind barbed wire, deliberately out of sight and out of mind, is not a sustainable solution to Europe’s migration challenges … These approaches do not prevent people risking their lives to reach Europe – they simply drive them onto ever more dangerous routes.”
Giuseppe Campesi, an associate professor in law and society at the department of political sciences of the University of Bari, told the EurActiv website: “Until now, border procedures existed, but they were not mandatory and did not necessarily involve detention. However, that will no longer be the case.”
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Publish date : 2024-10-15 13:44:00
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