Italian authorities said the number of migrants who have entered Italy through the Balkan route has doubled in the last six months, compared to the same period in 2018.
The number of migrants entering the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) through the Balkan route has doubled in the last six months as compared to the same period in 2018. Meanwhile, arrivals by sea have fallen 85 percent since 2018.
Invoking a suspension of the Schengen Agreement,
FVG Governor Massimiliano Fedriga said that joint Italian-Slovenian patrols will begin July 1 along the border.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said that since entrances by sea have been blocked, "now we will strengthen surveillance to protect land borders." "After years, Italy is no longer Europe's camp for illegals," Salvini said.
Foreigners tracked at the Slovenian border
Between Friday and Saturday last week, about a hundred irregular foreigners were tracked by police between Trieste and the neighboring town of San Dorligo delle Valle. Nearly all were Pakistanis and asked for international protection.
Data from the Italian Department of Public Safety showed 446 irregular foreigners were tracked in 2018 in the areas along the border with Slovenia, while in just the first five months of 2019, that number had already reached 652, with June 2019 figures still needing to be added. The number of arrivals from Slovenia has therefore doubled since last year in the first half of 2019 alone.
FVG Governor Fedriga said he is "extremely worried" and ready to "evaluate asking the government to suspend Schengen." He called for "full collaboration" from countries on the Balkan route, starting with Croatia, in the fight against irregular immigration.
"Italy and Slovenia cannot be the only two fighting illegal immigration," Fedriga said. "Everyone has to do their part and oversee the borders of their own territory," he said.
IOM says nearly 600 dead in Mediterranean in 2019
The number of migrants who have died in the Mediterranean thus far in 2019 has reached nearly 600, said the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Monday. It said a total of 26,090 migrants and refugees entered Europe between January 1 and June 19 of this year, about 35 percent less than the 40,846 who arrived in the same period last year.
There were 597 deaths on the main Mediterranean routes in the first 170 days of 2019, less than half the number of deaths registered in the same period in 2018, said IOM in a statement.
Most arrivals were registered in Greece (12,417), followed by Spain (9,029).
A total of 2,252 refugee and migrant arrivals had been registered in Italy as of June 19, with 3,137 migrants repatriated to Libya, IOM said. It said Cyprus and Malta registered just over 1,000 arrivals each. The highest number of migrant deaths, a total of 343, occurred on the sea route to Italy and Malta.