333,000 Migrants Attempted to Enter EU Illegally in 2022

The number of attempts by migrants to enter the European Union without authorization reached around 330,000 last year, the highest number since 2016, the EU’s border and coast guard agency said Friday.

Almost half of the 2022 attempts were made overland through the Western Balkans region, EU agency Frontex said, according to its “preliminary calculations.” Regardless of entry route, Syrians, Afghans, and Tunisians together accounted for roughly 47 per cent of the attempted border crossings.

Men accounted for more than 80 per cent of the attempts to get in, Frontex said. {snip}

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Frontex’s latest figures did not include almost 13 million Ukrainian refugees who were counted at the EU’s external borders between February and December. {snip}

The number of people making potentially perilous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea in poorly equipped and often overloaded boats and rubber dinghies continued to rise last year. Frontex said that well over 100,000 crossing attempts were recorded, around 50 per cent more than in 2021.

{snip} The agency said that 2022 saw the most people in five years arrive from Libya, the main departure point in northern Africa. {snip}