"More than 8 200 migrants reached Italy by sea… Meanwhile, the number of migrants reaching the Greek islands in the eastern Aegean fell to slightly fewer than 1 600… The number of detections of illegal border-crossings in the Western Balkans last month stood at nearly 1 170," the press release read.
The European Union has been struggling to manage a massive refugee crisis which escalated in 2015 with hundreds of thousands of people form the Middle East and North Africa seeking asylum in the EU member states.
Frontex detected over 1.83 million illegal border crossings in 2015, in contrast to some 283,000 in 2014. Preliminary Frontex data for 2016 suggests that 182,500 people crossed the EU border, with the major drop attributed to the EU-Turkey deal on migrants. The figure contrasts sharply with the spike in migrant deaths.
Never miss a story again — sign up to our Telegram channel and we'll keep you up to speed!