Frontex’s Annual Risk Analysis 2011 records the main trends in regular and irregular migration into the European Union in 2010 and offers predictions for the coming year’s trends. Regarding irregular migration, the sharp decrease reported in 2009 (of around a third on 2008) stabilised in 2010; Member States and Schengen Associated Countries reported a total of 104,049 detections of illegal border crossing at the sea and land external borders, a total almost identical to the 2009 figure of 104,599.
By far the most dramatic change of 2010 occurred at the Greek borders with Turkey (land and sea), which recorded a 45% increase between 2009 and 2010. Here, detections of illegal border crossing soared on previous years as the dominant routes used by migrant smugglers continued to shift. The Greek-Turkish land border in particular saw massive increases in migratory pressure, peaking at around 350 irregular migrants a day predominantly crossing a 12.5-km section of land border in the Evros river region, mainly around the Greek city of Orestiada.
In addition to triggering the first ever deployment of Frontex’s rapid-response capability — Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABITs) — this phenomenon also set a new record for detections of illegal border crossings. Greek authorities reported a total of 47,706 detections at the land border with Turkey, which compares to previous annual peaks of 30,000 in the Canary Islands in 2006 and 31,300 on the Italian island of Lampedusa during 2008.
Meanwhile, irregular migration via the West African, Western Mediterranean and Central Mediterranean routes continued to decrease, thus reducing the overall detection of irregular migration of West Africans, who were once the most commonly detected migrants on those routes.
In terms of refusals of entry, Member States reported only a slight decrease (-4%), from 113,029 in 2009 to 108,500 in 2010. There was a wide degree of variance however between border type, with an increase of 2.2% reported at the land borders and a decrease of 11% reported at air borders. Consequently, and for the first time since data collection began at the EU level, the annual total for refusals of entry was higher at land borders than at air borders. Ukrainians continued to be the main nationality refused entry, mostly at the Ukrainian border with Poland, which is one of the busiest sections of the EU’s external borders. Serbians became the second most frequently refused nationality with an increase of more than 80% following the visa liberalisation process in the Western Balkans. At the external air borders, Brazilians continued to be the nationality most often refused entry, despite the fact that these refusals declined by more than 20% compared to 2009.
The number of detections of forged documents increased by 20% on the 2009 figure (from 7,872 to 9,439) though with passenger flows in the hundreds of millions, the absolute numbers represent only a tiny percentage of travellers. Spain was the Member State in which the highest number of cases of forged document use was reported. The number of cases of illegal stay (migrants entering legally and then overstaying their visas) decreased overall by 15% on 2009 — from 412,125 to 348,666.
Over the coming year, irregular passenger flows across the external borders are expected to increase. This is due to increasing mobility globally as well as the possibility of visa-liberalisation procedures for the EU’s eastern European partners and new agreements governing local border traffic along the eastern borders. These developments will in turn increase the workload of Member States’ border-control authorities in preventing the use of legal channels for overstaying. In addition, Europe will host two major sporting events in 2012 — the Olympic Games in London and the UEFA Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine — both of which will be marked by substantial increases in external-border traffic. There may also be important changes in the external Schengen and EU borders in 2011 or 2012, with the possible entry of Romania and Bulgaria into the Schengen area and Croatia’s possible accession to the EU.