How has immigration enforcement in the EU evolved over the past year?

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There was a decrease of 27.4% in the number of citizens found to be illegally present in EU countries in 2024, according to the latest Eurostat figures.

Germany, France and Italy together represented more than half of all third-country nationals found to be illegally present in the EU last year.

Close to 57% of refusals happened at land crossings, largely on the Polish, Croatian and Romanian frontiers.

Air borders handled 39.8% of rejected travellers, with France alone turning back 7,800 people.

Meanwhile, only 3.4% of total refusals were at sea borders. Italy reported the highest numbers of refusals at the EU sea borders, followed by France.

The largest number of people refused entry into the EU in 2024 was recorded for Ukrainians, Albanians and Moldovans. 

Ukrainian citizens who were refused entry into the EU mainly attempted to cross the land borders with Poland and Romania. These individuals did not benefit from temporary protection.

Most Albanian citizens were refused entry at the Greek, Croatian, Hungarian and Lithuanian land borders, or the Italian air and sea borders.

Meanwhile, most Moldovans were refused entry at the Romanian, Polish and Latvian land borders.

Almost 50% of the refusals of entry were explained by not-justified purpose or conditions of the stay and absence of a valid visa or residence permit.

Returns of third-country nationals

The number of third-country nationals returned increased by 19.3% compared to the previous year.

Georgian citizens were subject to the highest number of returns in the EU, with 11,585 of them returned to a third country.

They were followed by Turks (7,910), Albanians (7,810) and Moldovans (4,970).

53.8% of returns to third countries were voluntary, while 46.2% were forced.

In Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia and Czechia, more than 90% of third-country nationals returned voluntarily. Only Italy reported all returns as forced returns.