Brussels – With one month to go until the end of the year, data from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) confirms a drop in irregular entries into the EU compared to 2024. From January to November, there were around 167,000, 25 percent fewer than a year ago. On the other hand, the numbers nail Brussels to a more uncomfortable reality: despite all the efforts – and resources – spent to fight traffickers and smugglers, crossings along the central Mediterranean route decreased by a mere 1 percent.
The overall decrease is driven by the strong reduction of irregular entries on the West African (-60 percent) and Western Balkan (-43 percent) routes. The Mediterranean, however, is a different story. In particular, the central one, which points to the Italian coast, remained the EU’s busiest migration corridor: Frontex detected 63,200 arrivals, almost 40 percent of all irregular entries this year. “Essentially unchanged compared to the same period last year,” the EU agency admits in a note: the drop in departures from Tunisia and Algeria was offset by the surge in crossings from Libya. Despite the
controversial cooperation with the so-called Libyan coastguard, over 90 percent of migrants who travelled the central Mediterranean route departed from Tripoli.
On the western Mediterranean route, irregular crossings even increased by 15 percent, with Algeria remaining the main driver, accounting for more than 70 percent of arrivals. In the eastern Mediterranean, on the other hand, irregular crossings decreased by 30 percent, to almost 46,200. However, the Libyan hurdle also remains here: the Libya-Crete corridor recorded a 260 percent increase in detections in the first eleven months of 2025. The West African route recorded the sharpest decline among the main migration routes to the EU, with a 60 percent drop to just over 16,800 detections.
The most frequently reported nationalities were Bangladeshi, Egyptian, and Afghan. Despite the overall reduction in irregular migration, the death toll remains dramatic. The International Organisation for Migration estimates that so far this year, more than 1,700 people have lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
There is another corridor along which traffic has remained essentially the same: that outgoing from the EU, across the Channel to the UK. From the French coast – between those who made it and those who were brought back – over 62,000 migrants departed.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
