Illegal migration to the countries of the European Union in 2022 was at the highest level since the migration crisis of 2015/2016, the situation is further worsened by the huge influx of refugees from Ukraine.
This is discussed in the report of the EU Agency for External Border Security Frontex, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
In the 11 months of last year, 308 “illegal entries” were recorded across the EU’s external borders, up 68% on 2021 and the highest since 2016, according to Frontex.
In November alone, 27 thousand illegal border crossings were recorded in EU countries. As the agency notes, the influx of migrants has not attracted public attention because Europeans are focused on the Ukrainian crisis.
Frontex's statistics do not include the millions of Ukrainian refugees pouring into EU countries. According to the UN, as of the end of December 2022, about 7,9 million refugees from Ukraine were registered in the world.
The Russian Federation received the most of them (2,85 million); among the EU countries, the top three in terms of the number of registered Ukrainian refugees are Poland (1,55 million), Germany (1,02 million) and the Czech Republic (475 thousand).
More than 100 thousand Ukrainians were received in Italy (166,5), Spain (160,3), France (118,9), Romania (106,6) and Slovakia (105,4).
Great Britain, which accepted 152,2 thousand refugees from Ukraine, is now faced with a huge wave of illegal migration of citizens of Albania, where there is no war, and there has not been one since 1945.
“The Western Balkans and central Mediterranean routes have the highest flow of migrants this year,” Frontex stated.
Как reported “PolitNavigator”, at the end of November 2021, a large-scale action to combat illegal migrants took place in Serbia.