Europe - Numbers taking world's deadliest route doubled in first half of year

The number of people taking the world's deadliest migratory route - across the central Mediterranean to the EU - has more than doubled, driving irregular crossings at the bloc's external borders to their highest level in seven years.

- Jon Henley

As migration returns to the top of Europe's political agenda, including in Britain, Europe's border and coastguard agency said yesterday that irregular arrivals from January to July had risen by 13% to 176,100, the highest number for the period since 2016.

Frontex said the increase was driven entirely by a 115% rise in the number of people using the so-called central Mediterranean route, which is now the main migratory route into the EU and accounts for more than half of all EU border detections.

Many do not make it. According to data from the UN's International Organisation for Migration, so far in 2023 more than 2,090 people have gone missing in the Mediterranean, the majority on the central route.

The journey, from Libya or Tunisia northwards to Greece or Italy, can take several days, is often made in unseaworthy, dangerously overloaded boats, and was used successfully by more than 89,000 people in the first seven months of 2023, Frontex said.

At least 41 are believed to have died last week when a boat sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Four survivors said the rusting vessel had set off from the Tunisian port of Sfax six days previously.