Frontex Counted 75,000 Irregular Crossings Into the EU by the End of August, 35 Percent Down on Last Year, and Only the Western Mediterranean Grew
The agency published its preliminary January to August figures on Friday. Three of the four main routes fell, the Atlantic route towards the Canaries fell furthest, and the count deliberately leaves out July's mass crossing into Ceuta.
Frontex published its August border figures on Friday, and they describe a European Union external border that is quieter than it has been in years. The agency recorded close to 75,000 detections of irregular crossings between January and the end of August, 35 percent fewer than in the same eight months of 2025. August alone accounted for about 10,700, which is 38 percent down on August 2025 in what is normally the busiest month of the year.
The numbers are preliminary and count detections rather than people: the same person crossing twice in two places is two detections. They also carry one deliberate hole. The mass movement of people from Morocco into Ceuta at the end of July is excluded, because most of those who crossed went back without being registered, and Frontex says no definitive total is likely ever to be established.
One route out of four went up
The Eastern Mediterranean stayed the busiest route, with more than 24,200 crossings, a fall of 25 percent. The corridor from Libya to the Greek island of Crete was the most active section over the period as a whole, but by July the land border with Türkiye had overtaken the Aegean islands. The main nationalities detected were Afghan, Sudanese and Bangladeshi.
The Central Mediterranean recorded around 19,400 arrivals, 55 percent fewer than a year earlier. Libya remained the main departure hub, accounting for roughly two thirds of the route, ahead of the Algerian and Tunisian corridors. Frontex attributes the drop to enforcement operations, detention campaigns and returns carried out by the Libyan and Tunisian authorities. Together, those two Mediterranean routes made up almost 60 percent of all irregular entries into the EU.
The Western Mediterranean was the only major route to grow, and it grew sharply: around 15,900 detections, up 34 percent year on year. Algeria is now the main departure country, with the Balearic Islands and the Spanish mainland the principal destinations. Pressure surged in July to a three-year monthly high before easing again in August. Frontex reads this as displacement rather than growth, with tighter controls in Morocco and on the neighbouring routes pushing departures towards Algerian shores.
The Atlantic route fell furthest
The Western African route, the one that runs up the Atlantic towards the Canary Islands, registered around 5,100 detections and the steepest decline of any route at 58 percent. Frontex credits preventive measures by Mauritania and, more recently, by Senegal in cooperation with Spain and the EU.
It also warns that the flow is volatile rather than closed. July brought a marked seasonal rise, with a growing share of boats setting out from The Gambia, Senegal and even Guinea-Bissau, which means longer and more dangerous journeys in the same small craft. The human cost has not fallen at the rate the crossings have: the International Organization for Migration counts more than 1,800 people dead in the Mediterranean so far this year.
Why this reaches Portugal
Portugal does not sit on any of these four routes, and nothing in Friday's release changes that. It matters here for two other reasons.
The first is institutional. Frontex's regional command for the Iberian Peninsula is based in Lisbon, and the Atlantic corridor that fell 58 percent is the one that command exists to watch. A quiet route is not a closed one, and Frontex executive director Hans Leijtens made exactly that point on Friday, saying that smuggling networks "do not disappear when the numbers fall. They move, and they wait for an opening to fully exploit it."
The second is legal. This was the first full summer under the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, which introduces a single standardised screening process at the external borders, with Frontex officers supporting member states on establishing nationality, collecting biometric data and verifying documents. Portugal's own version of that machinery, the screening centres and the twelve-week border return regime, became law on Friday. Falling arrival numbers across the bloc are the backdrop against which that regime now gets built out here.
