Greece has recorded a sharp fall in irregular sea arrivals in the first half of 2026, with the decline concentrated on the corridor from Turkey rather than the newer route from Libya.
Vassilis Kikilias, the Greek minister for maritime affairs and insular policy, said on August 6 that combined arrivals from Turkey and Libya had fallen by 34 per cent against the same period of 2025.
Since January 1, 15,389 people have reached Greek shores, against 23,243 a year earlier, according to figures the minister published on X.
Arrivals from Turkey are down 59 per cent. Those from Libya have fallen by about 4 per cent, leaving the Libya-to-Crete corridor as the busier of the two.
Kikilias credited the Greek Government, his ministry and the coastguard, saying the strategy in place was delivering results.
The question raised in Brussels is whether the traffic has simply moved west, towards a Spanish system widely seen as more permissive. On the available data, it has moved only at the margins.
Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, recorded just over 49,000 irregular crossings at the bloc’s external borders between January and June, a fall of 37 per cent year on year. Six of the seven routes it monitors registered fewer detections.
That makes the Greek decline broadly consistent with the European Union as a whole rather than evidence of displacement towards Madrid.
The western Mediterranean was the single exception. Frontex counted 7,860 detections on the route to mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands, up 17 per cent, with Algeria the main departure country.
The arithmetic does not support a straight transfer. The western Mediterranean gained roughly 1,100 crossings over the half year. Greece lost close to 7,900.
Frontex attributed the western increase to tighter controls in Morocco and to enforcement along the western African and central Mediterranean routes, which has redirected departures towards Algeria. Nearly half of the arrivals on the route landed in the Balearics.
The profiles differ as well. The main nationalities detected on the busier eastern and central Mediterranean routes were Bangladeshi, Somali and Sudanese, while the western route is driven by departures from the Algerian coast.
Spain’s own returns point the same way. The Spanish interior ministry recorded 14,479 irregular entries by all routes between January 1 and July 15, a fall of 24.7 per cent, with sea arrivals down 36.1 per cent.
The Canary Islands, the country’s principal entry point in recent years, saw arrivals drop by 61.2 per cent after preventive measures by Mauritania, Senegal and The Gambia agreed with Spain and the EU.
Arrivals to the Spanish mainland and the Balearics by sea rose by 8 per cent, to 7,032. Spain is therefore receiving fewer people overall, not more, even as the corridor from Algeria grows.
The argument that Spain has become the easier destination has more purchase at Ceuta, where land entries rose by 149 per cent in the year to July 15 and where tens of thousands crossed from Morocco from July 30.
Spain’s Supreme Court ruled on July 8 that migrants intercepted at sea off Ceuta and Melilla cannot be summarily handed back, on the grounds that open water does not offer the containment a fence does. Ceuta authorities and Civil Guard associations linked the surge directly to that judgment.
Popular Party secretary general Miguel Tellado blamed the Spanish Government’s extraordinary regularisation, approved by royal decree on April 14, which drew 1,174,978 applications before the window closed on June 30.
Government sources told Europa Press that none of those who crossed at Ceuta could join the scheme, which requires proof of residence in Spain before January 1, 2026. Madrid rejects any link between the decree and the crossings.
Juan Jesús Vivas, president of the autonomous city, was blunter about Rabat’s role. “Morocco has shown us that it isn’t reliable,” he told El País.
Athens has moved in the opposite direction. Greece suspended the registration of asylum claims from people arriving by sea from north Africa in July 2025, detained new arrivals pending removal and raised penalties for illegal stay under a migration law passed that September.
Migration and Asylum Minister Thanos Plevris, who has offered legal-aid lawyers a bonus for each asylum seeker persuaded to go home, said on August 5 that Aegean island arrivals had fallen by more than 60 per cent and credited a “firm but fair migration policy”.
He has also called for the power to suspend asylum procedures to be written into European law.
Frontex has cautioned that smuggling networks adapt quickly and that arrivals from Libya and Turkey were expected to rise as summer weather improved.
EU and Schengen interior ministers agreed on August 4 to reinforce the external borders, speed up returns and build early-warning systems, at a videoconference chaired by Ireland, which holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union.
