According to the most recent data published by Frontex, the European Union’s border control agency on Tuesday, January 14th, last year saw a 38% drop in illegal border crossings into the EU compared to 2023, with around 240,000 detections recorded overall.
According to the agency, the reduction is not because fewer people want to migrate to Europe from Africa and the Middle East, as some mainstream media would have you believe.
“Despite persistent migration pressure,” Frontex wrote, “intensified EU and partner cooperation against smuggling networks has significantly reduced crossings at Europe’s external borders.”
The report goes on to note that the drop in the overall numbers does not mean a uniform decrease throughout the EU’s external borders, with “patterns shifting across the continent” as migrants increasingly abandon old routes in favor of new, easier ones.
“The decrease in the total number was mainly driven by a 59% plunge in arrivals via the Central Mediterranean route and a 78% fall in detections on the Western Balkan route,” the report said.
Frontex attributes the sharp drop in arrivals on the Western Balkan route to “strong efforts by regional countries,” such as the Austro-Hungarian-Serbian cooperation against human traffickers, or Romania and Bulgaria’s increased efforts to contain illegal migration ahead of their Schengen accession.
However, the decrease in arrivals on the Central Mediterranean route—meaning Libyan and Tunisian departures toward Italy—was the biggest in terms of absolute numbers, with nearly a hundred thousand fewer crossings reported than the year before.
While this route still accounted for nearly 68,000 illegal entries in 2024, it is no longer Europe’s busiest migration chokepoint as it had been for years.
The Eastern Mediterranean route between Turkey and Greece (including arrivals to Cyprus) became the most frequented entry point of illegal migrants, with a 14% increase to close to 70,000 detections last year.
The largest increase, however, was registered at the Western African route toward the Spanish Canary Islands, which saw 47,000 migrants arrive—18% more than in 2023. With another 17,000 illegal migrants crossing directly to continental Spain last year, the country welcomed around the same number as Italy.
The countries, however, could not be more different when it comes to migration management. While the redistribution policies of the Spanish socialist government constitute a clear pull factor in West African migration, Italy’s tough deterrence policies put in place by Giorgia Meloni’s conservative government continue to prove skeptics wrong.
Meloni explained these results by pointing to the past years’ agreements with North African countries like Tunisia and Libya under which those governments received vital financial aid to develop their anti-human trafficking infrastructures. She also recounted the deterrent effect of the off-shore asylum processing centers built in Albania—which prevent failed asylum seekers from staying in the EU after their claims are rejected—even though they are not currently housing migrants due to leftist judicial interference.
But that’s not all. The Meloni government overhauled the entire Italian immigration system to streamline asylum procedures, introduce more thorough age verification protocols, ramp up voluntary returns and deportations, allow longer detention times to prevent rejected asylum seekers from disappearing, and eliminate several legal loopholes that allowed both migrants and “rescue” NGOs to easily abuse the system.
While mainstream media and opposition politicians regularly downplay the effectiveness of these policies, the results paint a clear picture. The Meloni government reduced illegal arrivals from 163,000 in 2023 to less than 67,000 last year.
Apart from raw numbers, the Frontex data provides some additional information as well. For instance, the agency registered a 9% increase in “exits” toward the United Kingdom, meaning nearly 68,000 Channel crossings throughout the year.
Regarding demographics, the report notes that the share of women remained low at just over 10% (two-thirds of whom are Middle Eastern migrants coming through Turkey, meaning hardly any women come from Africa); while the share of minors dropped from 16% to just 13%, possibly due to better age verification protocols being put in place.
