Over 540,000 migrants and refugees entered Europe through the Greek islands between January 1, 2015 and October 1, 2015, according to a latest report published by Frontex.
The European Union‘s border patrol agency noted that this is 13 times the number that had arrived during the same period in 2014 with Syrians comprising the largest share, while the number of Afghan entries has been rising.
Despite the massive numbers reported by Frontex, they are significantly lower than the ones the United Nations Refugee Agency recently presented. While Frontex estimates that 150,000 entered Greece in October alone, the United Nations Refugee Agency claimed there were actually 210,000 arrivals during that month.
“As part of its effort to assist Greece and Western Balkan states in dealing with the unprecedented migratory pressure, Frontex has strengthened Operation Poseidon Sea and deployed 114 officers on Lesvos and other Greek islands to support the local authorities in identifying, registering and fingerprinting new arrivals. This includes 37 officers deployed at the Lesvos hotspot, where Frontex is completing a pilot project of an accelerated registration process to shorten the waiting time for the migrants and pave the way for relocation of asylum seekers,” the Frontex reports notes.
Frontex also reports that while Greece is facing this increasing influx, there were half as many people crossing from Libya to Italy in October of 2015 as there were in October 2014. Italy’s arrivals for the first ten months of 2015 amount to 140,000. That is 15,000 fewer arrivals from 2014.
“Overall, the number of detections of illegal border crossings at the EU’s external borders between January and October stood at an unprecedented 1.2 million, four times the 282,000 recorded in all of last year,” Frontex writes.
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