Frontex publishes analysis of borders in the western Balkans for Q3
More than 610 000 illegal border crossings by migrants from outside the region were reported at the Western Balkan common and regional borders in the third quarter of 2015. This was more than twice the total number of such detections in the region since data collection began six and a half years ago (between January 2009 and June 2015).
Syrians and Afghans, who had originally entered the Eu in Greece, continued to be the two main nationalities reported crossing the borders in the Western Balkans. They were followed by Iraqis and Pakistanis. The number of African migrants detected in the region in the third quarter rose by nearly 40% from the previous three-month period.
Most migrants who crossed the EU’s borders in the Western Balkans had earlier landed on one of the Greek islands before continuing northwards through the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia.