Frontex: fewer illegal migrants in the EU

brussels - The European border agency Frontex registered 204,700 illegal migrants last year that the EU managed to enter. That is a decrease of 60 percent compared to 2016, according to the annual figures.

According to Frontex director Fabrice Leggero, the migration flow has declined sharply, but the number of illegal migrants is still higher than before 2014. In that year the migration crisis broke out. For this purpose, between 72,000 and 141,000 people managed to reach the EU annually without valid papers.

The Turkey Valley, which the EU closed in 2016 to limit the migration flow across the eastern Mediterranean, seems to be working. In 2016, more than 180,000 people managed to enter Greece, last year there were over 42,000. The route from Libya remains the busiest. Increasingly migrants are also trying to reach the EU from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

With the return policy it does not want to work out that well. Last year 151. 400 migrants were successfully returned to their homeland, but that is almost 14 percent less than in 2016.