(New) Migration Flows: Migrants Shifting from Overcrowded Greece to the Balkans

(Patria) – Irregular migration to the EU has fallen to its lowest annual average since 2013, announced the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, despite a significant increase in arrivals in Greece.

The Frontex agency reports that the number of sporadic crossings of the EU's external border has decreased by 6%, amounting to 139,000 – which is, again, 92% less than the record number recorded during the 2015 migration crisis.

This trend is attributed to a significantly smaller number of people reaching the European coast via the central and western Mediterranean routes, while a reciprocal increase in arrivals is recorded on the eastern Mediterranean routes.

Thus, 14,000 people, mainly from Tunisia and Sudan, arrived in Italy and Malta via the central Mediterranean route from North Africa, primarily Libya, which is 41% less than the previous trend. Also, the number of Moroccans and Algerians who usually take the western Mediterranean route towards Spain has decreased by 58% to 24,000.

However, the eastern Mediterranean route to Greece has become reciprocally more burdened and records 'growing migratory pressure' with more than 82,000 irregular migrants in 2019 alone, representing an increase of as much as 46% compared to the previous year.  

The Frontex agency claims that arrivals via the eastern route in the second half of 2019 reached their highest level since 2016, when the EU signed an agreement with Turkey to limit the flow of irregular migrants to the EU via Turkey.

Euronews also writes that there is evidence that migrants transferred from Greek islands to mainland Greece, where conditions in overcrowded camps are inhumane, were later transferred to the Western Balkans. For example, the number of irregular migrants at the EU borders with Albania and Serbia in 2019 was twice as high as the year before.

Citizens of Afghanistan constitute more than a quarter of the total irregular arrivals in 2019, which is three times more than the previous year. A higher number of women and children were also recorded.