It’s a common claim bandied about by far-right MEPs as the immigration debate grows ever more toxic. But do the figures match the rhetoric?
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00:00Is irregular migration to the EU really on the rise?
00:08It's a common claim bandied about by far-right MEPs and other European politicians,
00:13and it seems to be growing ever more toxic.
00:16However, the figures appear to tell a different story.
00:22Irregular crossings over the EU's southern borders,
00:25which typically see the most migration of this kind,
00:28are down by 35% from January to August,
00:31according to the UN's International Organization for Migration.
00:35Some 115,000 unauthorized migrants,
00:38representing less than 0.03% of the EU's population,
00:42have come to the EU this year via the Mediterranean or Atlantic,
00:46down from 176,252 in the same period last year.
00:52To put that in perspective, more than one million entered the EU in 2015,
00:56at the height of the migrant crisis.
00:58The EU's own data shows a similar trend.
01:01Frontex, the bloc's border agency,
01:03said that unauthorized crossings from the south have fallen by 39% overall this year,
01:08compared to 2023.
01:10Migrants most commonly use the route from North Africa
01:12across the central Mediterranean to Italy,
01:15yet about 64% fewer people use the route this year than in 2023.
01:19Yet it has to be said that the figures for individual routes
01:22are not the same across the board.
01:24The second most used route is the eastern Mediterranean,
01:27with migrants arriving in Greece.
01:29Numbers here rose by 57% in the first eight months of the year,
01:33with smuggling networks using speedboats
01:35and other aggressive methods to counter the Coast Guard.
01:38The Atlantic route from West Africa to Spain's Canary Islands
01:42is the third most used route, and its use has more than doubled this year.
01:46According to the UN, more than 25,000 migrants
01:49from the likes of Mali and Senegal landed there at the end of August.
01:53For more details, take a look at our website, euronews.com.