Croatia has assumed the six-month rotating presidency of the EU Council -- for the first time. The youngest EU member state is having a chance to prove itself on the world stage amid serious allegations of migrant abuse at its borders.
With the United Kingdom poised to leave the European Union on January 31, the number of boat arrivals on the British coastline has dramatically risen in recent months.
As 2019 draws to a close, the European border agency Frontex has released its latest reports about fluctuating trends across migrant arrivals to Europe. It found that arrivals were falling in the western and central Mediterranean and growing in the eastern Mediterranean as well as the Balkans.
British authorities say more than 60 migrants were picked up from five small boats as they tried to enter the country after crossing the English Channel. The vessels were intercepted over a seven hour period Tuesday morning. Some of the migrants said they were Iranian nationals, others said they were Iraqi or Uzbek.
The Italian constitutional court has ruled that judges can drop minor crime cases against undocumented migrants if the defendants have already been deported.
The bodies of six migrants were found on the Greek-Turkish border in the Evros region in recent days. They appeared to have died from exposure, a Greek coroner said.
Germany’s interior minister Horst Seehofer wants to continue the border checks he introduced in November after a prominent Lebanese clan member managed to travel to Germany despite a re-entry ban. In recent weeks, police caught almost 180 foreigners with entry bans during border checks. To fight criminal clans, the interior ministry also plans to intensify the residence law.
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.
52 migrants in a van tried to forcefully cross the border separating the Spanish overseas enclave of Ceuta from Morocco. The autonomous Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla on Morocco's northern coast have the EU's only land borders with Africa.
Since 2015, the Slovenian government has been erecting a barbed wire fence along its southern border in an attempt to stem the flow of migrants from neighboring Croatia. Residents of nearby Slovenian villages are not happy about the barrier, which they say damages the landscape and does not prevent migrants from crossing.
As more and more refugees and migrants try to make it to Western Europe via the western Balkan route, and with winter approaching, the EU and NGOs have warned of a humanitarian crisis in the Vucjak migrant camp and similar facilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina near the border with Croatia. On Friday, hundreds of locals protested against the migrants' presence.
As large numbers of displaced people arrived in 2015, some Schengen countries reintroduced border checks. Six are extending controls. That's illegal, EU observers say, and it undermines the idea of freedom of movement.