After arriving in a small wooden fishing boat from Morocco, eight young North Africans are due to be offered asylum in Portugal. Some say the group had been aiming for Spain and got blown off course, others warn that Portugal could become a destination for migration in the future.
The French government announced on December 12 it was ready to accept 400 identified refugees, waiting in Greece, over the coming months.
13 people have been arrested in a joint Italian-Greek police operation to break up an alleged smuggling gang. The gang specialized in sailing small groups of migrants between Greece and the south-east Italian coast.
The UN Migration Agency, IOM (International Organization for Migration) announced on Wednesday, December 11 that the Vucjak camp in the Una Sana Canton in Bosnia is now officially closed. 750 migrants were relocated to two facilities near the capital Sarajevo. Teams are now cleaning the Vucjak area.
Gorgui Lamine Sow, an undocumented migrant from Senegal has become a hero in Spain after he saved a man in a wheelchair from a fire in the man’s apartment. Now, the Spanish authorities are considering whether to award Sow a residency permit. More than 55,000 people have signed an online petition asking that they do so.
Berlin's mayor Michael Müller has announced that the German capital is willing to take in 70 unaccompanied migrant children and young people from the Greek island of Lesbos.
A 27-year-old Afghan mother died after a small fire broke out in a migrant camp on the island of Lesbos. Firefighters are investigating the cause of the fire.
A Russian man has been charged with fraud after he constructed a false border post near the Russian border with Finland. Border control authorities said he received 10,000 euros from four South Asian migrants after promising to smuggle them into the EU.
The German-based private rescue organization Sea-Watch announced that as of December 5 it was registered under the German flag. The organization said it had “insufficient confidence” in the Netherlands as a flag state.
Vincent Cochetel, the UNHCR Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean, called on European states in Brussels on Wednesday, December 4 to offer more resettlement places for refugees in Libya. So far, only Italy has offered a firm commitment.
French police said they removed around 600 Tibetan asylum seekers from a makeshift camp near Paris on Tuesday.
The Alan Kurdi and Ocean Viking rescue ships were given permission to dock in Italian ports on Wednesday morning and safely offload their 121 passengers. Both ships rescued migrants from the Mediterranean on November 28 and had been waiting for approval to enter a safe port.