Their journeys take them through pine forests and snow-covered mountains, along railway tracks and roads that lead to a hoped-for better life in the promised lands of Western Europe.
For more than a decade, hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia have crossed the Aegean from Turkey to Greece and then trudged north through the Balkans as they seek to forge a new future in Britain, Germany and other destination countries.
In 2022, nearly 145,000 asylum seekers made the journey, evading razor wire and metal fences, guard dogs and border patrols. In 2023, close to 100,000 embarked on the odyssey.
But last year, the numbers fell dramatically by 78 per cent.
Just over 21,000 illegal border crossings by unauthorised migrants were detected, according to a report this month by Frontex, the EU’s border protection and coast guard agency.
Why the dramatic decline? The answer lies in a number of different factors: tougher border controls, new visa restrictions, the high prices charged by smugglers – and the fervent desire of the six countries of the Western Balkans to join the EU.
Firstly, there has been a tightening up of border checks in the region, which consists of Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, all of which are entrance ways to Europe but are not yet members of the EU.
Much of that has come at the instigation of Brussels.
Under an initiative called the Western Balkans Action Plan launched by the European Commission in 2022, deals have been struck with Serbia, North Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro. A similar deal is under discussion with Bosnia and Herzegovina, which lies at the heart of the migration route.
Frontex has expanded its presence and now has around 500 officers in the region.
Signing the deal with Serbia last year, Ylva Johansson, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, hailed what she called “the excellent co-operation at the EU borders between Serbian border guards and Frontex colleagues against crime, smugglers of migrants, and irregular migration”.
In late 2023, a force of more than 800 Serbian police, backed up by drones and helicopters, launched a series of raids on smugglers operating in the country.
In the country’s biggest police operation in 20 years, they moved in on clandestine crossing points in Serbia’s east, on the border with Bulgaria, in the south on the border with North Macedonia, and on the frontier with Bosnia and Herzegovina.
They dismantled bases used by smuggling gangs and arrested smugglers, charging them with human trafficking and the illegal possession of automatic rifles and ammunition.
Secondly, the dream of joining the EU has been used as a carrot to dangle in front of the countries of the Western Balkans in return for them helping to stem the migrant flows.
“Countries in the region are tightening up border controls and co-operating on patrolling with Frontex in exchange for the promise of EU accession,” said a senior EU migration official.
“They want to show they’re willing partners. It’s much easier to convince countries to co-operate on migration if they want to join the bloc.”
Alberto-Horst Neidhart, a senior policy analyst with the European Policy Centre think tank in Brussels, said: “The measures put in place by the EU have kicked in and generated results.
“When the Commission launched its Western Balkans Action Plan in late 2022, it reflected the fact that the region was seen as a weak link in EU border management. There had been a spike in the number of arrivals that year. The actions taken were critical and involved strengthening border controls and fighting smuggling.”
Thirdly, Brussels has put pressure on the nations of the Western Balkans to bring their visa rules into alignment with those of the EU.
Previously, many of the Balkan countries had comparatively relaxed visa regimes which allowed people from developing countries to arrive directly by plane.
From there, they could pass illegally into the EU. That has now changed, as a result of direct pressure from Brussels. The European Commission’s orders were direct and uncompromising: “All Western Balkans partners should align their visa policy with the EU as a matter of priority,” it said in a report in late 2022.
Serbia, for instance, ended a policy by which the citizens of Tunisia, India, Burundi and Guinea-Bissau could enter the country without a visa. The policy change was a direct result of pressure from Brussels, which was worried that the system was being exploited by migrants trying to use Serbia as a springboard for entering the EU.
As border controls are made more rigorous, it becomes harder for migrants to move through the Balkans without being detained. That compels many of them to seek out the services of smugglers. But the smugglers have had to come up with more inventive tactics and new routes – and that means they increase their fees.
“Tougher border checks means that it is much harder for migrants to make the journey by themselves. More and more, they need to pay smugglers,” said Anesa Agovic, the field co-ordinator in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.
Macedonian soldiers patrol near the double razor wire at the Macedonian-Greek border – ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AFP via Getty Images
The profile of the smugglers is changing, said Ms Agovic.
“There used to be a lot of locals involved but we are now seeing a lot of foreign smugglers in the region. There are lots of Turks and Pakistanis but also people from Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus. There’s a huge amount of money to be made. They can facilitate border crossings because they have developed a relationship with corrupt officials.
“It’s a sophisticated business. They can offer a migrant a ‘package deal’ that will take them all the way from Turkey to an end destination like Germany or the UK. Britain is in the top five of final destinations.”
The smugglers have been helped by advances in technology such as GPS, online money transfer apps and encrypted chat groups.
Each year, traffickers make between 20 to 50 million euros from the Western Balkans, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime estimates.
There have been armed clashes between groups of Afghan and Moroccan smugglers on the border between Serbia and EU member Hungary, with the smugglers wielding automatic weapons.
The violence became so bad that Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s president, warned his interior minister that he would send in the army if the police could not handle the situation.
Migrants in Croatia board a train on the journey north – Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
While the EU and Frontex hail the 78 per cent drop in illegal arrivals as a grand success, operators on the ground are not entirely convinced by the statistics.
Across the region, NGOs that work with refugees and migrants say that tougher border controls have pushed the whole business of irregular migration further underground.
With asylum seekers using new routes and resorting to smugglers, they are harder to detect and therefore go uncounted.
“There was a reduction in the number of migrants last year but not as big as what Frontex is saying,” said Ms Agovic, speaking from Sarajevo.
In Trieste in northeastern Italy, which is a destination for many of those travelling north through the Balkans, welfare organisations insist that Frontex’s statistics are a dramatic underestimation of the true number of migrants passing through.
The Italian Consortium of Solidarity (ICS), an NGO operating in Trieste and Friuli Venezia Giulia, the region that borders Slovenia, said there were far more migrants using the Western Balkans route than the Frontex figures would suggest.
The ICS pointed out that the number of migrants illegally entering Greece from Turkey increased by 14 per cent last year compared to 2023. Greece is the traditional entry point for the Balkans route and the vast majority of those 69,000 people are likely to have headed north into the region. Migrant journeys are taking place “in less visible ways” with the assistance of “ever more structured traffickers’ networks”, the NGO said.
‘Movement of people has become more concealed’
The International Rescue Committee, an international NGO, said that its staff in Trieste last year helped more than 13,000 migrants and refugees, which was a decrease of just 16 per cent compared to the number of people the organisation assisted in 2023.
“The movement of people has become more concealed, rapid, and predominantly nocturnal due to increased border controls. Additionally, smugglers are now utilising newer, less frequented, but more dangerous routes,” said a spokesman for the IRC.
As Balkan nations crack down on the multi-million-pound business of people smuggling, experts say there are lessons to be learned by the UK.
“One thing that we’ve learned is that collaboration between countries is key, sharing information is key,” said Ms Agovic. “Smugglers operate across national boundaries and it is only with joint efforts that the smuggling rings can be fought. I would also say, follow the money. A lot of the dirty money from smuggling ends up being banked by the big-shot smugglers, none of whom live in the Balkans. Some of them are based in the UK or Germany. That’s where the money goes.”
For Western European countries that are already struggling to deal with migrants and refugees, the reported drop in numbers through the Balkans may come as welcome news. But the downward trend may not last long.
“Are these numbers going to stay the same in the long run? Migrant flows can change rapidly,” said Mr Neidhart from the European Policy Centre.
“The central Mediterranean has seen decreased numbers thanks to the co-operation between Italy and Tunisia but the number crossing from West Africa to the Canaries has increased. The situation in the Western Balkans could escalate again at any point. If the civil war resumes in Syria, for instance, that will produce displacement and movement.
“There’s no guarantee that the numbers we are seeing now will continue into the future.”
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Publish date : 2025-01-25 06:12:00
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