Though illegal border crossing continue to be a source of concern for European leaders, thanks to the externalization of migration the number of people trying to enter the EU has drastically decreased in 2024, wrote EUobsever.
Preliminary data from the EU’s border agency Frontex, released on Tuesday (13 August), shows that the number of unauthorized border crossings into the EU between January and July decreased by 36 percent to 113 400.
According to Frontex report, the routes through the Central Mediterranean and Western Balkans saw the largest declines in irregular border crossings, at 75 percent and 64 percent, respectively. In the meantime, detections on the Western African route increased by 154 percent, continuing to record unprecedented numbers. This year, EU officials’ concerns about reducing migration from this region have grown. In March, Frontex director Hans Lejtens stated that the organization was prepared to provide emergency assistance to Spain in the wake of a spike in migrants traveling from the coast of west Africa to the Canary Islands in Spain.
In the first seven months of this year, 21 620 migrants traversed the West African route, mostly heading to the Canary Islands from Mali, Morocco, and Senegal. Currently, the EU border agency employs about 200 people in the area out of 2 900 officers and staff overall.
This year, the second-busiest migration route was the Eastern Mediterranean, where arrivals increased by 57 percent to nearly 29 700. When comparing the total numbers, there is a noticeable decrease from 2023, when Frontex reported that 380 000 unauthorized border crossings to EU member states had occurred, the highest number since 2016 during the height of the civil wars in Afghanistan and Syria.
“The primary reason for the decline this year is the preventive actions taken by the authorities in Tunisia and Libya to impede the activities of smugglers,” Frontex stated, adding that although the central Mediterranean is still the busiest migration route to the EU, it has become less active. Ninety-five percent of all migrants reported on the central Mediterranean route are arrivals from those two countries. The countries sending the most migrants to the EU are Afghanistan, Mali, and Syria. The Sahel region is still the top exporter of people on the move.
Cash-for-Migrant-Control Deals with North Africa looks effective but raises concerns
Last year, the EU agreed to a deal worth close to €1 billion under which the Tunisian government would step up its migration control. EU officials also concluded similar agreements with Mauritania (March 2024) and Egypt (April 2024), with a much larger scale of funding in the latter case.
In terms of numbers, that seems to have been a success for the Central Mediterranean route. On the other hand, reports from civil society organizations have detailed grave violations of human rights, such as the arbitrary detention, arrest, and deportation of sub-Saharan Africans from Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.
In July 2023, MMC, a global think tank that studies mixed migration tendencies, observed that Tunisia has witnessed a decline in the way it treats migrants since the agreement was signed. This is evidenced by the rise in xenophobic and racist stories about the government forcibly uprooting migrants to its borders with Algeria and Libya and abandoning them in the desert without food or water. This is consistent with more general criticisms of EU migration agreements made by Human Rights Watch and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, which claim that because human rights accounting and benchmarking are lacking in these agreements, abuses could be encouraged.
As we previously reported, the Egyptian border guard force is holding Sudanese refugees in “secret military bases” using funds from the EU. Their asylum claims are frequently denied, and they were deported back to Sudan.
Previous EU-funded initiatives on migration and border control in Mauritania were successful in temporarily lowering arrivals in the Spanish Canary Islands, but this was only followed by a rise in popularity of alternative mixed migration routes. Furthermore, once funding stopped, the number of visitors to the islands rose once more, demonstrating the unsustainable nature of the actions.
In its second term of office, Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission is prepared to negotiate similar agreements with African states, with Senegal in west Africa probably being a top priority. The new EU Commission will also feature a new Commissioner for the Mediterranean, whose mandate will include partnerships to curb migration.