Today, Frontex is releasing its annual Risk Analysis for 2020, which provides a comprehensive picture of the European Union’s migratory situation and various challenges for border management.
The report presents a series of indicators from 2019, such as detections of illegal stay, arrested people smugglers and fraudulent documents, along with passenger flow data.
These show that while the detection of illegal border crossings between border crossing points has gone down to the lowest level since 2013, other indicators, like refusal of entry and detections of persons staying illegally, rose from the previous year.
The report also discusses other challenges for border management and Frontex – pandemics, terrorism and various types of cross-border crime. These include illegal firearms, drug trafficking and stolen vehicles.
Risk Analysis for 2020 also features special analyses that touch upon other core functions of Frontex. They include the effect of the agency’s new mandate in the area of returns, changes in the way criminal smuggling networks have been operating and tracking the movement of terrorists. Other interesting topics analysed by our experts are security risks posed by blacklisted flag vessels and secondary movements of migrants by sea.
In addition, the report presents an integrated asylum-migration picture Frontex prepared together with the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) and Europol.
Finally, Risk Analysis for 2020 reviews the possible evolution of the situation along the external borders of the EU in the coming years.
Among of the challenges foreseen by Frontex are the effects of pandemics and migrants organising themselves or being used to challenge border regimes. Other potential challenges include the possibility of a rise in the numbers of irregular migrants after falling each year since 2015 and much reduced passenger flows across borders.