The European Union's strategy for reducing illegal migration relies on building a "big, invisible wall" far from its own borders, intercepting and turning back migrants before they reach European soil and can lodge asylum claims. This is done through a patchwork of agreements signed by the EU and its member states with transit countries. In exchange for cutting migration, transit countries receive large sums of aid and investment: Egypt was promised €7.4bn ($8.1bn); Tunisia €1bn.
Most people crossing illegally into the EU arrive by boat on three routes. The central Mediterranean route runs mainly from Tunisia and Libya to Italy and Malta. The eastern Mediterranean route goes mainly from Turkey to Cyprus and Greece by sea, and includes land crossings into Greece and Bulgaria. The western African route sees boats enter the Atlantic from countries such as Morocco and Mauritania, heading for the Canary Islands (Spain).
The EU's first major deal was struck with Turkey in 2015 and Italy signed an agreement with Libya in 2017. Their effectiveness was initially limited because blocking one route merely displaced flows to another. As deals expanded across north and west Africa, they became more successful by making it harder to skirt around blockages. In 2024, the year after the EU and Tunisia signed a deal, crossings over the central Mediterranean route fell by 58%. An agreement with Mauritania cut flows on the western African route by 52% in 2025. The EU and its members also train and fund the coastguards, border officials and police forces of partner countries.
Frontex, the EU's border agency, uses drones to patrol the skies above Libyan and Tunisian waters.
In the first eight months of 2025, 112,000 people crossed illegally into Europe, down 21% from a year earlier and 52% from the comparable period in 2023, when 231,000 arrived. Europe's migration crisis dates to the mid-2010s, when civil war in Syria and other conflicts caused the continent's biggest flows of refugees since the second world war. More than a million people arrived in 2015.
Some of the so-called coastguards in Libya that the EU guides to boats are little more than militias. Migrants detained in or returned to Libya have been abused, raped or enslaved, according to human-rights groups. Malta has been accused of helping a Libyan militia force boats back from its waters. Tunisia's regime has been accused of dumping detained migrants in the desert near its border with Algeria, and Mauritania of pushing people back into Mali and Senegal. In 2025 the Libyan coastguard fired on a rescue ship belonging to SOS Méditerranée, a search-and-rescue NGO. At least 456 migrants died and more than 420 were reported missing in the central Mediterranean in 2025.
Legal immigration into Europe has peaked. Illegal immigration is about half what it was in 2023, with Britain the notable exception.
Because the EU relies on the co-operation of foreign governments to keep migrants out, it risks putting itself in hock to them. Turkey and Morocco have already used their ability to open or close migrant flows to pressure Europe to release funds or soften criticism of their foreign policies.
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