By the end of August 2015, improvised camps had been set up all over Mytiline, the capital of Lesbos, and outside the two designated areas. This created a huge pressure for the local population and authorities, already low on resources…
That war creates refugees is nothing new. The Bosnian war of 1992-95 forced 2.2 million people to flee. What is new since then is European Union (EU) enlargement and the development of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). This imposes…
There are currently some 60 million people in the world who have been displaced by persecution, war, conflict or disaster – the most we have seen in the post-World War II era. However, whereas at that time weary and war-torn…
“No camp! No camp!” shouted the refugees who were on their way to Austria, refusing to get off the train after it was stopped by the Hungarian police at the town of Bicske, where one of the country’s main refugee…
The Brenner Pass on the border between Italy and Austria is the northernmost limit that migrants who cross the Mediterranean Sea to Italy are allowed to go, according to the Dublin Regulation. This is also an internal border of the…
In the absence of a consistent policy response implemented across all European Union (EU) Member States, the burden has largely fallen on states at Europe’s external borders to receive, screen and process the thousands of people arriving as well as…
The exclave of Melilla, a 12-km2 piece of Spanish territory located on the Mediterranean coastline of north Africa, has a border with Morocco. For some, this Europe-outside-Europe represents a way to pass through the walls of Europe. Due to a…
In 2015 alone, 140,000 people have made the perilous journey in what is known as the Central Mediterranean route, a stretch of sea that lies between Libya and Sicily. Many of them had written the phone numbers of relatives back…
Promoting human rights and protecting human dignity are among the core values of the European Union (EU), whose institutions are legally bound by the Charter of Fundamental Rights where these values are enshrined. That is why saving and protecting the…
When looking at numbers of arrivals and deaths in the Mediterranean, it is important to ask how robust the data are and what they represent. If we are to frame and inform more accurately the policy challenges facing Europe, it…