New data from the EU border agency Frontex shows that the number of refugees flowing over the borders of the European Union is breaking all records.
See the press release from Frontex here.
According to the numbers from Frontex, more than 107,500 people attempted to enter the EU during July this year. This is presumably the highest number since 2008, when the agency began registering the number of refugees, and more than three times as many as in the same month of the previous year.
This is not only the first time that the number of refugees passes 100,000 in a month. This is also the third month in a row that the number of refugees registered in a single months breaks the record. The number of observations of refugees in the period January-July is close to 340,000 people while the number in the same period last year was 123,500. In comparison, the total number of refugees for the entire year of 2014 is at 280,000. This shows a drastic increase which causes Executive Director of Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri, to sound the alarm and ask for increased support for the countries which are receiving the many refugees.
"This is an emergency situation for Europe that requires all EU member states to step in to support the national authorities who are taking on a massive number of migrants at its borders," he says in the press release and calls for more equipment and manpower to patrol the border areas especially around Greece and Hungary.
Of the refugees from the month of July, 50,000 refugees are observed by the Greek islands Kos, Lesbos, Chios and Samos. In the same month, the number of migrants who have journeyed from Libya to Italy has passed 20,000 and the total number of migrants on this route has reached 90,000 so far in 2015.
A total of about 55,000 boat refugees have been picked up in the Mediterranean in the first half of the year, and merchant ships have rescued 15,000 of them. This mean that merchant vessels have rescued 27 percent of the boat refugees. Danish merchant ships are behind 18 percent of this, writes Finans.dk.
UN agencies take new step to help refugees at sea
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