Brussels – In the first nine months of 2025, irregular entries of migrants into the European Union decreased by 22 per cent compared to last year, reaching 133,400. An almost generalised decrease: -36 per cent from the Eastern border, -47 per cent from the Western Balkans, -58 per cent from Africa on the Atlantic route. The only exception is the Mediterranean.
The figures shared by Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, speak for themselves: apart from the eastern route to Cyprus and Greece, which has fallen by 22 per cent, the numbers in the central and western Mediterranean remain the same as in 2024. As is the cost in terms of human lives: according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates, 1,299 people have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean since the beginning of the year. So much for the controversial agreements made by the European Union to block the departure of migrants from the Maghreb shores.
In the Central Mediterranean, almost 50,900 arrivals were recorded between January and September 2025, 2 per cent more than in the same period in 2024. While departures from Tunisia decreased, the counterbalance is Libya, from which departures increased by 50 per cent.
On the Western Mediterranean route, irregular crossings increased by as much as 28 per cent. In September alone, arrivals increased by more than half, with departures from Algeria accounting for nearly three-quarters of the detections this year. According to Frontex, Morocco’s “increased prevention efforts have pushed more people to use the services of traffickers in Algeria”, and in general, there has been “a shift of operations to Algerian territory.”
On closer inspection, the situation is also evolving rapidly in the Eastern Mediterranean: after a drop in arrivals in August caused by adverse weather conditions, crossings via the Libya-Crete corridor recorded a new increase in September, with a 280 per cent increase over last year.
Departures from Libya worry Brussels, which is trying hard to combat irregular migration by means of bilateral agreements and controversial legislative proposals for human rights protection. The European Commission is maintaining a complicated confrontation with Tripoli, and now also with the Benghazi authorities. In July, General Khalifa Haftar
expelled an EU delegation from the country, which also included the Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner, and the Italian Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi.
Not to mention the accusations that have been raining down for years on the EU executive for funding the so-called “Libyan coast guard”, which has no qualms about
opening fire on NGOs and migrants and is widely and notoriously colluding with trafficking networks. But Brussels renews the commitment: next week, the EU executive and Frontex will host representatives of Libyan authorities from both the east and west, who are dealing with migration. First in Warsaw, on 14 October, at the Agency’s headquarters, then in Brussels, on 15 and 16 October.
