Europe — Mixed Migration Flows to Europe Monthly Overview (December 2019)

A total of 128,536 migrants and refugees arrived in Europe through different land and sea routes between January and December 2019, 13 per cent less than the same period of 2018 when 147,673 sea and land arrivals were reported, 32 per cent less than the 188,372 arrivals registered in this period of 2017 and 67 per cent less than the 390,456 registered during this period in 2016.

There were 81,147 registered arrivals via the Eastern Mediterranean route (63% of the total) in Cyprus, Bulgaria and Greece in 2019. Another 32,513 arrivals were registered via the Western Mediterranean route (25%) leading to Spain in the same period, and 14,876 were registered crossing the Central Mediterranean route (12%), arriving by sea to Italy and Malta. This shows that the Eastern Mediterranean route continues to surpass both the Western and Central Mediterranean routes as the main route taken by migrants and refugees travelling to Europe by sea and land, as it has done each month since February 2019. In the same period of 2018, the Western route was recorded as the most active with 65,325 arrivals (44% of the total). On the Eastern route there were 57,543 registered arrivals (39%) and the on Central route there were 24,815 registered arrivals (17%).