What’s behind Europe’s sharp drop in illegal migration?

European countries are “going to hell” because “illegal aliens are pouring in”, Donald Trump told the UN last week. But, in actual fact, the number of migrants arriving in Europe is going down – dramatically.

EU border management figures show that, in the first eight months of this year, 112,000 people crossed illegally into Europe – down 21% from last year, said The Economist. That’s “an even more impressive” 52% drop from the comparable period in 2023, and an astonishingly small number compared with 2015, when “the continent’s biggest flows of refugees since the Second World War” saw over a million people enter Europe on asylum routes.

What did the commentators say?

The figures aren’t falling because the “underlying causes of migration have changed” but because, in response to a shift in public sentiment, the EU is “experimenting with new ways” of heading migrants off, said The Economist. After the 2015 influx, the EU “put a long bet on deterrence” and, although this has looked like “a poor wager” for some years, this summer “the bet seems to have paid off”.

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The bloc’s main strategy has been to “build a big, invisible wall far from its own borders” in countries which migrants try to pass through on their way to Europe. In return for cooperating, these “transit countries” get significant sums of aid and investment, as well as training and funds for their coastguards, border officials and police forces.

There has been a “high degree of cooperation” from Tunisian and Libyan authorities to curtail “the departure of would-be illegal migrants from their shores”, said The Arab Weekly. Significantly, there has also been a “massive drop in Syrians seeking protection” since the Assad regime fell at the end of last year.

But even as the numbers drop, “the pressure to get tough on migration has never been higher” and, for the “right-wing parties that hold sway in the European parliament”, deterrence must be accompanied by faster “returns” and tougher handling of “irregular arrivals”.

There are now “numerous well documented cases of asylum seekers being pushed back across EU borders by police and coastguards” in the bloc’s outermost member states, including Greece, Poland and Latvia, said the BBC’s special correspondent Fergal Keane. And even in Sweden, “which historically prided itself as a welcoming nation for those fleeing persecution”, conditions for permanent residency and family reunification have been tightened, and “asylum quotas have been substantially reduced”.

What next?

A “landmark” EU migration pact that “hardens border procedures and envisages accelerated deportations” comes into force next year, said The Arab Weekly. “But many countries felt it did not go far enough”, and further talks are expected in the months ahead, with extra “return hubs” for rejected asylum seekers a particular point of contention.

In coming years, migration numbers “may surge and fall”, said the BBC’s Keane, but the “global crises that drive migration are not going to disappear”. And that remains the “fundamental challenge“ for Europe’s politicians.