Brussels, 17/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - Frontex, the European agency tasked with coordinating operational cooperation on border security published its 2011 annual risk analysis on migratory flows on 11 May. This report reviews the 2010 statistics and looks at expected trends in 2011.
Frontex says that, in 2010, the flow of illegal migration continued to stabilise compared with 2009 with, for the member and associated states of the Schengen area, a total of 104,049 detections of illegal border crossings, almost exactly the same as the 104,599 the previous year.
The report notes, however, that detection of illegal border crossings rose by 45% on the borders between Greece and Turkey, with highs of 350 migrants per day before the Frontex Rabit mission was put in place in November 2010. In 2010, Greece reported a total of 47,706 detections at the land border with Turkey, which compares to previous annual peaks of 30,000 in the Canary Islands in 2006 and 31,300 on the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2008.
Illegal migration via the West African, Western Mediterranean and Central Mediterranean routes continued to decrease, thus, the agency says, reducing the overall detection of irregular migration of West Africans, who were once the most commonly detected migrants on those routes.
In terms of refusals of entry, member states reported only a slight decrease of 4% from 113,029 in 2009 to 108,500 in 2010. There was a wide degree of variance, however, between border type, with an increase of 2.2% reported at the land borders and a decrease of 11% reported at air borders, according to the report. Ukrainians continued to be the main nationality refused entry, mostly at the Ukrainian border with Poland, which is one of the busiest sections of the EU's external borders. Serbians became the second most frequently refused nationality following the visa liberalisation process in the Western Balkans.
The visa liberalisation process will contribute to the increase in illegal flows in 2011, Frontex suggests, expecting an overall rise in illegal immigration in 2011. In addition, it says, “Europe will host two major sporting events in 2012 - the Olympic Games in London and the UEFA Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine” and there is also “the possible entry of Romania and Bulgaria into the Schengen area and Croatia's possible accession to the EU” which could bring significant changes to the EU's external borders. The possibility of political upheaval, as in North Africa which brought thousands of Tunisians fleeing to Italy, must also be borne in mind, Frontex says. (S.P./transl.rt)