About: illegal immigration Archives

The European Union failed on Thursday (9 July) to reach a deal to resolve a migration crisis in the Mediterranean, and instead set a deadline for July 20 to find agreement on how to share out 40,000 asylum seekers currently in Italy and Greece.

Police chiefs from Germany, Austria and Hungary have agreed to help Serbia crack down on waves of illegal migrants transiting its territory heading for the European Union. Meanwhile, Budapest said it will forge ahead with plans to erect a fence at its border with Serbia.

Italy's immigration crisis intensified Friday (12 June) after a build-up of asylum-seekers at two major train stations resulted in clashes with police, an outcry from the right and fresh calls from Rome for EU help.

EU lawmakers on Wednesday accused some member states of passing the buck by rejecting a Brussels plan for binding quotas for refugees making the dangerous Mediterranean crossing.

The European Union is set to back plans on Monday for an ambitious naval force to fight people smugglers in the Mediterranean after a series of shipwrecks that killed hundreds of migrants.

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban called a European plan to evenly distribute asylum seekers among EU members states "mad and unfair" on Friday, amid UN criticism over the country's handling of refugees.

Chronic underdevelopment in many African countries is intensifying the crisis unfurling on Europe's doorstep. But EU development aid continues to decline. EURACTIV France reports. 

Fewer and fewer people choose the EU as a long-term residence, but Germany is the exception to this rule, according to an OECD finding, most likely due to the effects of the eurozone crisis. EURACTIV Germany reports.

Italy is in talks with other European Union states about sharing the burden of rescuing migrants crossing the Mediterranean in crowded boats from North Africa, senior officials meeting in Milan said on Tuesday (8 July).

About 30 bodies have been found in a migrant boat which was stopped between Sicily and the North African coast, Italian news agencies reported this morning (30 June), citing the navy and coastguard.

On the eve of the EU elections, France’s main opposition party, the UMP, lashed out at the Schengen agreement. Nicolas Sarkozy resurfaced and echoed this sentiment in an opinion piece published by the French weekly Le Point.  EURACTIV France reports.