(Source: Frontex, European border and coast agency) – Arrival of migrants in march: Italy remains under pressure, Greece up from previous month. Here were almost 13 000 detections of illegal border crossings on the three main migratory routes into the EU in March.
This is 10% more than in the previous month. However, the total number of detections on these routes for the first quarter of 2017 fell 70% from the same period of last year to 32 650.
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Central Mediterranean
Italy remained under migratory pressure last month. The number of migrants arriving through the Central Mediterranean route in March rose by more than one-fifth to 10 800. This brought the total for the first three months of the year to nearly 24 250, almost 30% higher than the figure from the same period of 2016.
Nationals from Bangladesh, Nigeria and Guinea accounted for the largest number of the detected migrants. Since the beginning of March, the number of migrants from the Horn of Africa (especially Eritreans and Somalis) has started to increase, probably in large part because of the improving weather conditions on the land route to Libya their home countries.
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Eastern Mediterranean
Better weather also helped boost the number of migrants arriving on the Greek islands in the Eastern Aegean to 1 690. This was up almost a half from February but only 6% of the figure from a year ago, when the EU-Turkey statement came into effect in the second half of the month.
Syrians, Iraqis and Pakistanis accounted for a majority of the detections on the Eastern Mediterranean route.
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Western Balkans
There were fewer than 380 detections of illegal border-crossings in the Western Balkans in March, almost 70% less than the previous month and barely 7% of the figure from March 2016. Afghans, Syrians and Pakistanis accounted for the largest number of migrants on this route.
Note:
The data presented in this statement refer to the number of detections of illegal border-crossing at the external borders of the European Union. The same person may attempt to cross the border illegally several times in different locations at the external border.
Foto: da sito Frontex
