The number of people trying to get into the EU dropped by around a half in 2012, the EU's border agency said Thursday (18 April). The Warsaw-based Frontex says some 73,000 people were detected in 2012, down from around ...

Europe's human rights watchdog has said Greece should consider banning the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party for its violence, racism and hate-filled rhetoric against immigrants. The Strasbourg-based Council of Europe says ...

The economic crisis is leading to a rise in the number of people being trafficked for sex, hard labour or organ donation, the EU commission said Monday (15 April,) but the vast majority of member states have failed to ...

Fears of massive migration and exploitation of the British welfare system are overblown, says a report published on Friday (5 April) by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. "Survey evidence suggests ...

Spanning some 2.5 million square kilometres, the Mediterranean Sea remains largely outside the surveillance scope of member states and the Warsaw-based EU border agency Frontex. “We do not know at present what is going ...

Fresh data from Dutch police shows how irregular migrants and criminals exploit the EU's passport-free borders. Under the rules of the so-called Schengen Area, which covers all EU countries except Bulgaria, Cyprus, ...

People travelling into Europe who overstay their visa, even for legitimate reasons such as unforeseen hospital stays or transport delays, could face automatic sanctions and fines, under new rules unveiled on Thursday ( ...

EU migrants could be prevented from using Britain's National Health Service (NHS) under government measures to dissuade Romanian and Bulgarian citizens moving to the UK. Mark Harper MP, immigration minister, indicated ...

The sharp pin of hammers striking on metal can be heard through the noise of a speeding scooter. Above, hidden away in back alleys and crumbling buildings in the maze of streets in the Kumkapi district in Istanbul, ...

Many of the groups which smuggle people into Europe are based in the migrant quarters of Turkey's vast city on the EU border - Istanbul. Kumkapi in Istanbul's Fatih district on the Marmara Sea coast is home to French ...

EUobserver's Nikolaj Nielsen visited the Greek-Turkish border in November to see what 'Fortress Europe' means in practice for refugees and people smugglers trying to get into the Union.

'Fortress Europe' - the fifth in a series of EUobserver investigative reports - looks at refugee and immigration networks operating on the edge of Europe, focusing on the 12.5-km Greek 'wall' completed late last year.

A chief of police in a border town in northeastern Greece says irregular migrants are no longer crossing into the country from its land border with Turkey. Barbed-wire fences, landmines, thermal night vision cameras and ...

Over 810,000 people were given EU citizenship in 2010, with Moroccans forming the largest group coming to the EU, followed by Turks, Ecuadorians and Indians. With 67,000 Moroccans granted nationality, they account for ...

This week's announcement by UK Home Secretary Theresa May of a block opt-out of the United Kingdom from key EU cooperation projects in justice and home Aafairs has not been well thought through. The British government ...

Germany, France and four other EU countries want to reintroduce visa requirements for people from the Western Balkans, saying that the measure is needed to combat a spike in asylum claims from the region. Ahead of next ...

Nearly a year after the conflict in Libya, the central authorities are struggling to exert their control over the various factions that contributed to overthrowing the dictator. As in all situations of political and ...

Europe should pursue an open-ended immigration labour policy to help tackle the economic crisis and ensure its working age population is maintained, according to a report presented by the Paris-based economic club the ...

The EU's joint judicial authority, Eurojust, is struggling to get member states to stop human trafficking. Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands fall victim to the crime in the EU each year. Many are exploited ...

Turkey says future visa-free travel will work out well because Turks no longer want to live in the EU. Its European affairs minister Egemen Bagis told EUobserver on Friday (22 June) that Turks these days travel to EU ...

Turkey is aiming to tell its 75 million citizens on Thursday (21 June) they can visit the EU without visas in a couple of years' time. The breakthrough concerns a technical step designed to end a toxic stalemate. The EU ...

An EU-co-financed project is aiming to mass-produce autonomous land vehicles designed to stop irregular migrants. Using a €13 million grant from the European Commission's research budget and €7 million of private ...

EU countries have put up a united front against Swiss quotas on immigration from former Communist member states. Foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton on Wednesday (18 April) in a statement on behalf of the Union said ...

Security services in Europe have neglected the kind of right-wing extremism which inspired Norway's Anders Behring Breivik to commit mass murder, a UK-based rights group has warned. "Post-911, all major authorities have ...

The European Parliament is currently discussing the EU victim’s rights directive. This directive aims to ensure that victims of crime have the same level of protection, support and access to justice in all EU countries ...

MEPs from across the political spectrum have united against an anti-immigrant internet hotline set up by the party of controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Deputies from all political groups - aside from the ...

The Dutch interior minister has told Brussels his new border cameras will catch illegal immigrants without breaking EU rules. Gerd Leers defended the project - which has already seen military-grade surveillance ...

Racist mobs in Greece and Hungary, mistreatment of Roma, Arab migrants and Muslim terrorist suspects and a feeble reaction by EU institutions point to a worrying right-wing shift inside the European Union, according to ...

The European Union initiated membership talks with Turkey in October 2005, but Ankara still has a long list of hurdles to jump over on its road to Brussels. Some Turks who have been born and raised in Belgium feel the ...

Almost every week for months now has appeared to be a crunch week for the eurozone, but with lending between banks freezing up, contagion spreading to Germany, and even the circumspect EU economy chief Olli Rehn ...

In a major speech ahead of elections in five months' time, French leader Nicolas Sarkozy has indicated he wants to curtail EU passport-free travel. Speaking about the euro crisis in Toulon, on France's Mediterranean ...

Undocumented migrants who are not allowed to work legally have to pay for medical care in most member states, sometimes putting their lives at stake, a recent report on healthcare by the EU fundamental rights agency ...

EU border agency Frontex and member states sending staff and equipment to Greece are complicit in the degrading treatment of migrants seized on the Greek-Turkish border, Human Rights Watch has said in a fact-finding ...

EU countries have "shamefully" failed to help some 5,000 African refugees who fled the violence directed against them in Libya and are now stranded on the Egyptian and Tunisian borders, humanitarian watchdog Amnesty ...

The European Parliament on Tuesday (13 September) agreed to extend the powers of Frontex, the bloc's border agency and insisted on some provisions reinforcing migrants' rights. Groups dealing with refugees say the ...

When I boarded the plane in Stockholm to fly to Oslo recently, no one asked me to show my ID. This stunned me – all the more so when I noticed the Swedish Crown Princess Victoria and her husband Daniel boarding the same ...

The Spanish financial crisis has been dragging on since 2009 so it is no surprise that it has touched the lives of the majority of the population. In this video, locals from the East Coast of Spain open up and share ...