Human migration

Migrants continue to reach the municipality of Presevo in southern Serbian in groups of mostly a dozen people, where they immediately seek asylum.

They do this in order to obtain documents that allow them to continue traveling. These migrants spend months on the road, crossing thousands of kilometers from Asian and African countries in their bid to reach the EU.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi rebuked fellow EU leaders on June 25 for failing to agree a plan to take in 40,000 asylum-seekers from Italy and Greece, saying they were not worthy of calling themselves Europeans.

European Union leaders have agreed to relocate 40,000 migrants from Italy and Greece to other EU countries over the next two years, in an effort to share the burden of a growing migrant crisis.

EU President Donald Tusk said the agreement was reached after an overnight summit early Friday, to show "solidarity with frontline countries."

EU leaders on Thursday agreed to relieve Italy and Greece of 40,000 people that landed on the two countries’ territory over recent months, people alternately described as asylum-seekers, refugees, migrants, irregular migrants, immigrants, illegals etc.

The visa regime for short-term stay of up to 90 days in Bulgaria for Russian nationals will remain in place.

On Wednesday Bulgaria's parliamentary economic policy and tourism committee voted down a proposal of nationalist party Ataka to lift the visa requirements for Russian nationals due to the projected decrease in the number of tourists from that country in the summer season.

Turkey's legal framework hinders the integration of migrants, and the country ranks bottom of a list of 38 developed nations, according to the latest world ranking by a Brussels-based think tank.

Turkey is failing to integrate migrants amid an increased flow of refugees from Syria, according to the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) 2015 report released on June 23.

Police found some 160 migrants who were hidden in a house used as the gang's base during the raid in the village of Vaksince, near Macedonia's northern border with Serbia, on Saturday.

Serbia is one of the five world countries with a protracted refugee situation - and has had more than 22,000 asylum requests in the first five months of 2015.

This date was presented by the Commissariat for Refugees and Migration.

French President Francois Hollande said June 19 that he thought commitments by individual EU member states offered a better way of resettling African and Middle Eastern migrants rather than the imposition of national quotas by Brussels. 

Over one quarter of the 185,000 people who applied for asylum in the EU in the first quarter of the year are citizens of Kosovo, according to Eurostat.

This makes them the most numerous category among asylum-seekers, the EU's statistical office said on Thursday.