The number of migrants travelling across the Western Balkans increased by 60% in 2022 compared to the previous year, an official of the International Organisation for Migration said on Thursday.
The increase was reported by Florence Daniels, IOM’s deputy director general for operations, who participated in a conference dedicated to migration in Sarajevo, according to vijesti.ba.
IOM’s annual report on migration trends in the Western Balkans said local authorities had registered 192,266 migrants in the region – a 59.5% increase compared to 2021, and a whopping 348% spike compared to 2018.
The region’s countries lie on the so-called Western Balkans migration route, and the report said most migrants come from Turkey to Greece and then move northwest across the region. It also pointed out that migrants, who previously spent weeks or months in local reception centres, are now “moving rapidly through the region, often in a few days.”
Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Interior Minister Nenad Nešić told the Sarajevo conference that the countries of the region would be united and show solidarity in dealing with the challenges of migration.
“Criminal elements of the migration crisis are mostly seen in human trafficking, as well as trafficking of arms and drugs,” he said, according to vijesti.ba.
The Swedish presidency of the EU Council announced on Thursday evening that EU ministers had agreed on a general approach to the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation and the Asylum procedure regulation, the two main pillars of the reform of the EU asylum system, regulating how to share out the responsibility of hosting refugees and migrants.
(Zoran Radosavljević | EURACTIV.com)
Read more with EURACTIV
Vučić announces new economic measures
Source: euractiv.com
