Frontex

Bulgaria and Romania's full entry into Schengen is still uncertain, with Austria not yet ready to lift its veto, despite hopes expressed by both the Romanian and Bulgarian governments.

One man has died and two more are missing after a boat carrying migrants sank off Gavdos, an island south of Crete.

Coast guard officials said the vessel went down 21 nautical miles south of the island.

A drone from the EU's border agency Frontex spotted the semi-submerged vessel and a nearby ship conducted a search and rescue operation.

Three people were rescued while one was missing after the tourist boat sank in the eastern Aegean on Tuesday afternoon.

The four passengers were Turkish nationals, according to state-run broadcaster ERT. They all ended up in the water when the vessel capsized in unclear circumstances. 

The Minister of Immigration and Asylum spoke about the increasing trend of migration flows, cooperation with Turkey on migration and the return of migrants on SKAI television.

The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, reports an increase in illegal migration flows from Turkey to the Greek islands during the first eight months of 2024, with 37,163 people crossing the borders illegally.

Migratory pressure along the Bulgarian-Turkish border has dropped by 70% compared to the previous year, according to Commissioner Anton Zlatanov, Director of the Main Directorate "Border Police." This announcement followed a meeting with Hans Leitens, the Executive Director of Frontex, who is visiting Bulgaria for the second time in recent months.

Poland hopes to bring in border guards and police from Finland, Germany and Greece to help patrol its frontier with Belarus, a senior official said on Thursday, amid mounting concerns over migration pressures from the east into Europe.

In a recent announcement by the European Commission, significant progress has been reported in the joint efforts to safeguard the external borders of Bulgaria and Romania. The EU's support has yielded promising outcomes, particularly in the areas of migrant returns, asylum procedures, and countering smuggling activities.

The EU will vote Wednesday on a vast overhaul of its immigration policies that would notably harden entry procedures for asylum-seekers and require all the bloc's countries to share responsibility.

The European Parliament will decide a series of laws forming the bloc's migration and asylum pact, based on a European Commission proposal first made in September 2020.

In a bid to bolster border management and migration control, the European Commission (EC) has announced its decision to allocate 85 million euros to Bulgaria and Romania.