This is a timeline of the European migrant crisis of 2015 and 2016.
Against the backdrop of four years of Syrian civil war and political instability in other Middle Eastern countries, there was a record number of 1.3 million people who lodged asylum applications to the European Union's 28 member nations, Norway and Switzerland in 2015, compared to 600,000 applications filed in 2014.
In 2015, the European destinations for most of the migrants were Germany, Sweden and Austria. Syria was the country of origin of most displaced persons that year, but many economic refugees also fled Kosovo as their country faced financial hardship in the aftermath of the 1998-1999 Kosovo war. Whereas migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq were considered to be genuine refugees with 85% of their applications granted, the latter's were almost always rejected, resulting in fewer asylum applications from the Balkans, including Kosovo, Albania, and Serbia in 2016 onwards.
The surge in numbers in 2015 was accompanied by a significant change in irregular migratory movements as large numbers of migrants, displaced persons, and asylum seekers attempted to enter Europe by both land and sea, bypassing regular migration. Previously most irregular migration consisted of migrants from the African continent crossing the Mediterranean to Italy and onward to other European countries.
In 2016, the number was only slightly lesswith 1.2 million asylum applications filed. From Syria alone, millions of people were dislocated in the "humanitarian catastrophe" that affected many Middle Eastern and European nations and beyond.
In 2017, the number of applications decreased dramatically to a total of 706,913 to these destination countries, 40% of which were granted. In 2017, Germany, Italy, and Greece received the most first-time asylum applications. Deutsche Welle (DW) said that some of the likely causes of this decrease included the November 2015 deal made between Turkey and the EU to stem the flow of Syrian refugees into Europe, the closure of the easiest and safest routethe Balkan inland route, as well as intensified efforts by Italy to stop migrants attempting to make the shorter sea crossing from northern Africa to Italy.
In 2022, the number of first-time applicants rose to approximately 996,000the highest since the Syrian war-related 2015 and 2016 peak numbers. Syrians continued to attempt to escape their home country through the Eastern Mediterranean route, through Libya and then by boat to Europe. According to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) service, the repression of peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2013 in Syria resulted in the ongoing conflict, millions of displaced persons, and hundred of thousands of deaths by 2022.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported in March 2023 that the world's largest refugee crisis continues to be Syria.
Overview A 2016 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report described how Europe's "unprecedented surge in asylum applications" peaked in 2015 as the Middle-East was plagued by civil war and political instability. In 2015, the main destination countries were Germany, Sweden and Austria, and the top countries from which the migrants originated were Syria, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Albania, Iraq, Eritrea, Serbia, and Pakistan. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Eritrea continued to experience conflicts in 2015.
Of the asylum applications to European nations from January to September in 2015, 222,000 were Syrians, 103,000 were from Afghanistan, and 69,000 were from Iraq, the three countries with the highest likelihood of being accepted as genuine refugees and therefore more likely to be granted asylum status in Europe. Most Balkan asylum seekers were rejected and the number of applicants decreased in 2016. Those from Syria, Iraq were accepted at a rate of 85%.
The EEA and Switzerland received 2.3 million applications for asylum from 2009 to September 2015. There is often a time lag between the number of asylum applications lodged and the number of asylum seekers in a host country.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported in March 2023 that the world's largest refugee crisis continues to be Syria because of the ongoing conflicts since 2011. Of the 14 million displaced, 6.8 million Syrians continued to be internally displaced with many still needing assistance. As of 2023, Germany with 850,000 Syrian refugees, was the EU nation with the largest number, while Türkiye, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt also hosted 5.5 million. Syrian refugees lodged asylum applications in more than 130 nations.
According to the UNHCR, from the beginning of the 2011 Syrian conflict, there were more than 4 million Syrian refugees mainly living in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.
2011 October 2011 The Greek government began the construction of a fence on the 125 mile Greece–Turkey land border which was completed in December 2012. Prior to its construction the northern Greece border along the Evros River provided the shortest and safest route for migrants to enter Europe.
2014 Most migrants from the African countries crossed the Mediterranean Sea by boat to reach Italy and then moved onward to other European countries, according to the European Commission's European Migration Network (EMN).
11 September: 2014 Malta migrant shipwreck A migrant boat with more than 500 people on board sank near Malta; nine survivors were rescued. 14 September: 2014 Libya migrant shipwreck A migrant boat with up to 250 people on board sank near the coast of Libya; 36 people were rescued.
2015
The Europol Monitoring Team (EPTM) reported that there were 354,618 arrivals by sea to Europe from 1 January to 28 August in 2015 and 272, 070 during the same time frame in 2016, based on data from the International Organization for Migration.
InfoMigrants reported the number of migrants by the main land and sea routes in 2015, which included the Central Mediterranean from North Africa (153,900), Eastern Mediterranean (885,400), Western Balkan (764,000), Western Mediterranean (7,000), and the Eastern Land Border (1,900). The same report said that the Central Mediterranean route had been the "most popular migration route to Europe" since 2015.
January 2015 2 January: A ship, the Ezadeen, was rescued off the coast of Italy with 360 Syrian migrants on board. The crew, believed to be people smugglers, abandoned the ship and it had been drifting in the Mediterranean for weeks. 23 January: Local Hungarian Mayor of Ásotthalom László Toroczkai has an idea to have a border fence built along the southern border of Hungary, in order to stop illegal migration, which was later implemented as the Hungarian border barrier the same year by the Hungarian government.origo.hu - Kerítést építene a határon Toroczkai - Viktória Serdült - 23 January, 2015, 13:34origo.hu - Toroczkai: Az illegális migráció ma a legnagyobb fenyegetés - Tibor Lengyel - June 9, 2015, 14:20
February 2015 9 February: At least 300 migrants are believed to have drowned after four inflatable boats sank off the coast of Libya.
March 2015 3 March: Ten migrants drowned when their boat capsized off the coast of Libya. Italian coastguard ships rescued almost 1,000 others over a 24-hour period.
April 2015 12 April: A boat with up to 550 migrants on board capsized off the coast of Libya. About 400 people are believed to have drowned while about 150 were rescued by the Italian coastguard. 16 April: About 40 migrants drowned when a boat sank off the coast of Libya. Meanwhile, twelve Christian migrants drowned after Muslim migrants threw them overboard following a row on another migrant boat. There were about 150 migrants on board, heading from Libya to Italy. Italian police arrested fifteen Muslim migrants and charged them with "multiple aggravated murder motivated by religious hate". 18 April: A boat with up to 700 migrants on board capsized in Libyan waters south of the Italian island of Lampedusa. At least 650 migrants are believed to have drowned while 28 were rescued by the Italian coastguard. It was the highest death toll from a shipwreck during the migrant crisis. The ship was later displayed at the 2019 Venice Biennale as Barca Nostra. 22 April: Fourteen migrants were killed when they were hit by a train near Veles, Macedonia. A large group of Somali and Afghan migrants making their way to western Europe were walking along the track.
23 April: The European Council held an emergency meeting to discuss the migrant crisis. It agreed to triple funding for rescue operations aimed at migrant boats, and several EU member states promised more ships and other resources. It also agreed to look at ways to capture and destroy smugglers' boats before they can be launched, and to deploy immigration officers to non-EU countries.
May 2015 4 May: A boat with more than 130 migrants on board sank off the coast of Sicily. Up to 40 are believed to have drowned while the rest were rescued by a Maltese merchant ship. 11 May: The European Commission proposed that EU member states should take in refugees under a quota scheme. Countries which had received large numbers of migrants and asylum applications – such as Italy, Malta and Germany – supported the proposal. Others such as Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Estonia opposed it.
June 2015 17 June: the Hungarian cabinet approves construction of a high barrier (Hungarian border barrier). 26 June: At a meeting of the European Council, it was agreed to relocate 40,000 migrants from Italy and Greece to other EU member states. It was also agreed to take in another 20,000 refugees from outside the EU. It was announced that the relocation scheme would be voluntary and there would be no mandatory quotas for each country. New figures from the UN Refugee Agency showed that 63,000 migrants had arrived in Greece and 62,000 in Italy during the first half of 2015.
23/24 and 29/30 June: A strike by ferry workers caused major traffic jams in Calais, France. Hundreds of migrants camped nearby exploited the situation by trying to break into lorries bound for Britain. This led to clashes with police, who used batons and pepper spray to hold back the migrants. Some lorry drivers were threatened by migrants wielding knives and iron bars. The disruption forced the closure of the ferry port and the Channel Tunnel. 27 June: The United Kingdom announced that it would begin building more than two miles of high-security fencing at the Channel Tunnel port in Calais, in an attempt to stop thousands of migrants breaking into lorries bound for Britain.
July 2015 1 July In a 1 July 2015 report the UNHCR UK described the situation in Europe as a "maritime refugee crisis of historic proportions." The report described a significant increase in migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia travelling from Turkey to Greece on the eastern Mediterranean route fleeing war torn countries. Their destination countries were in western and northern Europe so they continued their journey from Greece through the Balkans. Italy which was the country where most migrants landed in 2014, continued to be the first destination for people from sub-Saharan countries, and Eritrea and Somalia. 9 July: Twelve migrants drowned when their overcrowded dinghy sank off the coast of Libya. The Italian coastguard rescued 106 others. 13 July: Hungary began building a barrier along its border with Serbia.
August 2015
4 August: Bulgaria began building a new section of razor wire fence along its border with Turkey to stop migrants entering the country illegally. It is the final portion of the fence, which began construction in November 2013 and will completely seal the border. 5 August: A boat carrying between 400 and 600 migrants sank off the coast of Libya. Almost 400 were rescued by an Irish Navy vessel and 25 bodies were recovered.