Belgian authorities on Sunday said they rescued 15 migrants from a rubber dinghy that was taking in water 11 kilometers off the Belgian coast. The migrants were attempting to reach the United Kingdom from France.
Asylum applications in Europe fell in April to their lowest level in over a decade. But an asylum lawyer has warned that migrants prevented from applying for protection because of coronavirus restrictions are now especially vulnerable.
Are you living through the COVID-19 pandemic outside your home country? A global team is trying to find out the impact of the virus on migrants and refugees so that decision-makers and NGOs can provide better support to cope with the crisis.
Police in France and Belgium have arrested more than two dozen suspects over the deaths last year of 39 Vietnamese migrants in the UK. The suspects are accused of belonging to an illegal smuggling organization.
A court in Bruges announced on Wednesday that police had arrested six men "of Middle-Eastern origin" on the suspicion of migrant smuggling. The six were stopped in the Belgian port of Ostend in possession of two inflatable speedboats.
The number of people granted asylum in Europe in 2019 fell slightly compared with the previous year. The latest report by the European statistics office, Eurostat, shows the figure was down 6% overall.
Belgian migrant aid associations have raised the alarm over a lack of government measures to protect migrants from an outbreak of the coronavirus. The groups also say that migrants' rights are being violated.
Belgium could do better in its treatment of migrants without papers, a new report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) finds. In some migrant services, though, the country has made progress since the last report in 2013.
Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with EU leadership amid a migrant crisis at the Turkish-Greek border. Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel expressed a commitment to the 2016 EU-Turkey refugee pact.
In a letter sent to Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, the EU's human rights watchdog has once again asked Italy to suspend its collaboration activities with Libya's controversial coast guard.
It was an emotional day in the European Parliament on Monday, when a surprise meeting took place between the famous migrant doctor and MP Pietro Bartolo and an Eritrean woman who survived the tragic October 2013 shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa. The woman had been left for dead by first responders but was then miraculously saved by Bartolo.
A Belgian policeman shot at a car transporting migrants during a chase in 2018, killing a two-year-old Kurdish girl. The man has now been charged with involuntary manslaughter.