Balkan Route: NGO warning about Frontex data showing major fall in irregular crossings ― Agreement on Frontex deployment in Bosnia and Herzegovina ― Agreement on border control co-operation between Croatia, Italy and Slovenia ― NGO shines spotlight on …

• The Italian Consortium of Solidarity has called for ‘careful’ reading of new data from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) that shows a significant decrease in the number of irregular crossings on the Western Balkan route in 2024.
• The EU and Bosnia and Herzegovina have initialled an agreement that will allow Frontex to assist the Western Balkan country with its border management operations.
• Croatia, Italy and Slovenia have signed a memorandum on joint police patrols at Croatia’s external border.
• A new NGO report has shed light on the financial support that the EU provides for accelerated asylum and deportation procedures in Bulgaria, including an ‘assisted voluntary return’ programme.
• Activists have accused the Bulgarian border police of intentionally blocking their efforts to rescue three Egyptian minors who died from hypothermia in December 2024.
• A new NGO report has provided details of EU funding for border surveillance in Serbia.
• The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled against Hungary in another case of unlawful detention in the country’s transit zones.

There was a significant decrease in irregular border crossings via the Western Balkan route in 2024. According to preliminary data from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), the number of detections on this particular route fell by 78% to 21,520. Frontex attributed the significant fall in the number of recorded irregular crossings to “strong efforts by regional countries to stem the flow”. However, it also noted “increasing violence by smugglers”. Following the publication of the data, the Italian Consortium of Solidarity (ICS) called for “careful analysis” and warned that the numbers only capture “part of the reality” for migrants on the Balkan route. The NGO highlighted that “no international source shows a real decrease in departures from the main areas of origin of refugees,” and that in certain countries “the situation is getting worse”. ICS also advised that the Frontex data should be used in conjunction with other indicators such as the numbers of arrivals in Greece and pushbacks on the EU’s external borders in the region. It concluded that the reduction in the visible presence of people on the move on the Balkan route might be more indicative of trafficking networks becoming more structured and crossings taken place in less visible ways, rather than a genuine decrease in the number of crossings.

The EU and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) have initialled an agreement that will allow Frontex to assist the Western Balkan country with its border management operations. Commenting on the agreement, which took place on 18 December 2024, EU Ambassador to BiH Luigi Soreca said that the Frontex deployment was a “crucial step” towards addressing “irregular migratory flows” and “migrant smuggling” while ensuring “the rights of every person crossing these borders is respected”. BiH Minister of Security Nenad Nešić described the agreement as a “symbol of our readiness to co-operate, negotiate and take concrete steps towards a better future for all citizens of BiH”.

Croatia, Italy and Slovenia have signed a memorandum on joint police patrols at Croatia’s external border. At a press conference following a meeting of the three countries’ interior ministers on 20 January in Slovenia, Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi stated that the temporary reinstatement of border controls on the Italy-Slovenia border had had a “deterrent effect on irregular entries”. “Since the implementation of this measure, approximately 2,300 individuals have been reported, and 318 were arrested, 160 for aiding and abetting clandestine migration”, he added.  Croatian Minister of the Interior Davor Božinović said that the trilateral agreement would result in more effective exchange of operative data using existing tools and joint patrols, demonstrating EU co-operation to “combat illegal migration”. He added that Croatia had recorded 58% fewer “illegal crossings” in 2024 than it did in the previous year.

A new NGO report has shed light on the financial support that the EU provides for accelerated asylum and deportation procedures in Bulgaria, including an “assisted voluntary return” programme. According to the report, which was published by Statewatch on 13 January, Frontex has taken on an expanded role in these processes including providing counselling services for individuals subject to deportation orders or in detention. It notes that  in 2023, Frontex deployed four return counsellors to Bulgaria where they conducted 1,547 counselling sessions.

Activists have accused the Bulgarian border police of intentionally blocking efforts to rescue three Egyptian minors who died from hypothermia in December 2024. The activists allege that they were alerted to the three boys lying unconscious in the snow near Burgas on 27 December but that that efforts to rescue them were thwarted by the Bulgarian authorities’ failure to respond to emergency calls and border guards physically preventing rescuers from reaching them. One of the activists from the NGO No Name Kitchen wrote on Instagram: “This was no accident. These preventable deaths are calculated and deliberate, they are political decisions and policies made by the EU in its pursuit of border control and exclusion”. The Directorate-General for Border Police has denied the activists’ reports and claimed that it had “reacted immediately to all received signals” but that the alerts in question included “wrong or misleading information”.

A new NGO report has provided details of EU funding for border surveillance in Serbia. According to the report by the Border Violence Monitoring Network and Collective Aid, EU pre-accession support has been used for the procurement of advanced technologies such as night observation devices, drones, heartbeat detectors and video surveillance cameras. It notes that € 6.5 million were designated for Serbia to acquire border surveillance technologies and biometric database IT systems as part of the European Commission’s Western Balkan Action Plan which was announced in 2022.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled against Hungary in another case of unlawful detention in the country’s transit zones. On 19 December 2024, the court ordered the Hungarian state to pay € 10,000 in compensation to a family of six who were unlawfully detained for four months in the Röszke transit zone in 2019. ECRE member organisation the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, which represented the family, noted that the case was the organisation’s 21^st  in which the ECtHR ruled against the Hungarian state for unlawfully detaining people seeking asylum in transit zones.” “The scale and severity of the human rights violations committed by the Hungarian state are further evidenced by the 24 urgent interim measures that had to be issued by the ECtHR, ordering the Hungarian state to stop the practice of depriving asylum seekers of food,” it added.

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