European Border and Coast Guard

The new executive director of European Union border agency Frontex pledged Thursday to ensure that illegal pushbacks of migrants trying to reach Europe wouldn't take place under his watch.

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.

The European Union will send officers from its Frontex border agency to help Macedonian border guards fight illegal migrants after signing an agreement on October 20 to do so.

So far, it has been blocked by Bulgaria's veto on North Macedonia's EU integration, as Sofia did not allow the agreement to be signed in the Macedonian language.

On November 17 last year, when Hervé Yves Caniard entered the 14-floor conference room of the European Union border agency Frontex in Warsaw, European newspapers were flooded with stories of refugees a few hundreds kilometres away, braving the cold at the Belarusian border with Poland.

Greece has pushed back a total of 41,523 irregular migrants to Turkish waters between 2020 and May 31, 2022, according to a report by Turkey's Ombudsman Institution (KDK).

The report also said that 53 irregular migrants in 2021 and 33 others in 2022 lost their lives - either drowned or froze to death - due to pushbacks.

Turkish Coast Guard teams have rescued 77 irregular migrants pushed back by Greek authorities in two separate operations conducted off the western province of İzmir's Dikili district on June 8.

The first team patrolled the Dikili coasts upon notifications that some migrants on a dinghy were floating on the sea.

Asylum seekers wait with their belongings as refugees and migrants from the destroyed Moria camp wait to enter a new camp on Lesbos island, 17 September 2020. Photo by EPA-EFE/VANGELIS PAPANTONIS

The European Union has finally started to see the Greek policy of pushbacks in the Aegean Sea, which has claimed many lives of asylum seekers, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on May 7.

More than 38,000 migrant smugglers have been apprehended and over 9,000 suspects have been arrested in Turkey in the past six years, according to the Presidency of Migration Management.

From Jan. 1 to April 19 this year, security forces have captured 2,545 migrant smugglers, which points to a 53 percent increase from the same period in 2021, the authority said in a statement.

Ljubljana – Interior Minister Aleš Hojs and his Cypriot counterpart Nicos Nouris discussed in Ljubljana on Friday the war in Ukraine and its consequences. They stressed the importance of managing migration at the EU level. They also spoke of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, where Slovenia advocates flexible solidarity.