Are Crete and the Balearics Revealing Cracks in the EU Migration Deterrence?
The need for a fresh approach to migration to Europe
The figures published by Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, for January to May 2025 appear to point to a pivotal moment in the EU’s approach to irregular migration: in the first half of the year, the total number of arrivals has reduced by 20% compared to the same period the previous year. This continues a downward trend from 2024 that has widely been attributed to the tougher policies implemented by the EU to protect its borders. The increasing focus on deterrence, in particular its costly partnership agreements with transit countries in North and West Africa, is seen as a key factor in the drop in numbers – even if it has come at a considerable human rights cost for migrants living in or travelling through them.
However, as EU President Ursula von Leyen herself acknowledges, this seeming success story is complicated by the fact that this trend is far from uniform. While some routes have undergone considerable reductions, including the Western Balkans (-56%), the Atlantic route (-35%), the Eastern Mediterranean route (-30%) and the Eastern Land Border (-7%), others – the Western Mediterranean (+6%) and the Central Mediterranean (+7%) routes – have seen their numbers climb. The Channel crossing from France to the United Kingdom (UK), an exit point from EU territory, has also seen a marked increase (+17%) in movement between January and May this year. In different ways, these supposed anomalies may highlight a deeper truth about irregular migration to Europe that policy makers are reluctant to acknowledge.
This article, building on some of the insights from MMC’s report Beyond restrictions: How migration and smuggling adapt to changing policies across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the English Channel, offers a brief overview of two recent and at first glance unrelated phenomena: the sharp uptick in arrivals at the Greek island of Crete, predominantly from Libya, and the sudden popularity of the Balearic islands as an entry point to Spain. In both cases, these apparently unexpected developments are more predictable than they may seem, each one rooted in different ways in the inherent flaws of the EU’s long-term approach to the management of irregular migration across the Mediterranean Sea.
Migration from Libya to Crete: An emerging fault line in the EU’s externalisation policy?
One of the most striking developments in 2025 to date has been the emergence of the islands of Crete and Gavdos as the primary point of arrival for people travelling to Greece, with most departing from eastern Libya. Though this route had already become more prominent during 2024, with the number of arrivals that year around six times higher than the total in 2023 (860), the uptick has been especially pronounced in recent months, reaching 8,200 by 6 July. Unlike before, most of this movement does not originate from Türkiye, traditionally the main point of embarkation for people (predominantly from Syria and Afghanistan) trying to reach Greece along the so-called Eastern Mediterranean route. Instead, the arrivals in Crete and Gavdos are comprised primarily of Egyptians, Sudanese, and Bangladeshis embarking from Libya.
A long-standing yet unpredictable partner
Libya is, of course, one of the EU’s longest-standing partners on migration management, having benefitted in recent years from millions of Euros in financial and technical assistance to support border security, protection, and community stabilisation. The Libyan coast guard, in turn, has been actively intercepting and returning migrant boats leaving from its shores. Given this relationship, the uptick in movement appears surprising, and the EU has been pressuring Libyan authorities to do more to prevent these crossings.
However, this partnership has been put under pressure by some recent geopolitical shifts. Against the backdrop of a divisive 2019 agreement between Libya and Türkiye around maritime oil and gas exploration that is bitterly contested by the government in Athens – tension between Libya and Greece have been souring, and according to some analyst migration may have been used as a tool of coercion against Greece.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that much of Libya, including the eastern areas of the country where the majority of Crete-bound boats are departing from, is under the control not of the internationally recognised Government of National Unity (GNU) in Tripoli but the rival, Russia-backed Government of National Stability (GNS). The GNS’s significance for Moscow has only increased since the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the subsequent loss of its naval base in Tartus. There are growing concerns that, with Russian support, General Khalifa Haftar, the warlord and de facto ruler of eastern Libya, is seeking to weaponise migration against the EU as a means to extract concessions from Europe.
A tough response…. but only on migrants
On the surface, Greece has responded robustly, threatening in late June to dispatch warships into international waters near Libya to prevent these arrivals. It subsequently announced in early July that for the next three months it would be suspending asylum applications from people who had embarked from North Africa. Unlike Poland’s controversial suspension of asylum at its borders in March 2025, the Greek proposal appears to not even include exceptions for vulnerable groups such as unaccompanied minors and pregnant women. It also raises numerous practical, legal and ethical concerns, not least the fact that these provisions ultimately impact the hardest on people in need of protection.
Underneath this draconian stance, though, are signs of a deeper insecurity. Despite the lack of formal recognition, the opposition regime in eastern Libya has in practice enjoyed considerable, albeit covert, collaboration with the EU around migration. Militias under Haftar’s control have reportedly been involved in pullbacks of migrant vessels to Libya, despite the obvious human rights concerns this poses for those on board, not to mention allegations that that they are involved in the smuggling business themselves.
Nevertheless, an early July mission of the EU migration commissioner and the interior ministers of Italy, Greece and Malta to broker an agreement with the GNS have not gone smoothly. The delegation was declared “persona non-grata” and “deported”, after been denied entry shortly after their arrival in Benghazi. The group were supposedly refused entry because they had first visited the GNU in Tripoli without notifying the GNS. However, reports have since emerged that their reluctance to participate in a photo opportunity with GNS ministers (a move that could have been interpreted as an official endorsement of the regime) may have been the trigger for their expulsion.
Symptoms of a weak and short-term migration diplomacy
This situation points to a wider problem in the EU’s efforts at externalisation – the extreme fragility of the various “partnerships” it has brokered in North and West Africa, to the tune of hundreds of millions of Euros, with the aim of preventing irregular migration. Its relations with Libya are by no means the only area where the quid pro quo of money for stopping migrants has been shaken by a breakdown in goodwill or shifting geopolitical interests. At different points, countries such as Türkiye, Tunisia, and Morocco have used the threat or reality of migration from their territories to Europe as a means to coerce concessions from the EU. In 2021, for instance, shortly after a diplomatic fallout between Morocco and Spain, around 9,000 migrants crossed the border from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in what was widely seen as a reprisal measure by Rabat. Besides the deleterious human rights implications of these arrangements, the relationships underpinning them are precarious at best. As externalisation has become increasingly central to the EU’s migration policy, the power balance has arguably shifted towards its partner countries in North Africa, who are in a better position to be assertive about their own needs and priorities.
Increasing migration to the Balearics: Less surprising that it might seem
While the majority of irregular migration to Spain continues to occur along the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands, numbers in the first half of 2025 have dwindled while at the same time the lesser-used Western Mediterranean route has seen an uptick in movement. While absolute numbers remain low, much of this increase is due to the sharp increase in the number of arrivals at the Balearic islands, with almost 3,000 arrivals in the first six months of 2025 – around 3.5 times more than the same period in 2024. Most migrant arrivals embark from the central coast of Algeria towards various entry points in the Balearics: from Tipaza to Formentera and Ibiza, from Algiers to Cabrera, and from Bugía, Dellys and Jijel to Mallorca, with the latter also serving as a starting point for boats heading to Menorca. With the exception of some migrants from Morocco or sub-Saharan Africa, the majority of those making the journey to the Balearics are Algerians themselves.
The situation in the Balearics has recently led to calls for urgent support to strengthen local search and rescue capacity, particularly as evidence mounts of the significant death toll incurred along the route. So far, 31 bodies of potential migrants have washed ashore between January and June, including the remains of five people who had been bound at their hands and feet. As with the Canary Islands, the speed and scale of irregular migration to the Balearics has quickly overtaken local capacity to adequately respond to the continued arrival of small boats. The concern is that the situation in the Balearics may also not be short-lived, but instead develop into a protracted crisis
However, as with Crete, while the uptick in movement to the Balearics has attracted much more media coverage in recent weeks, in reality the rising number of arrivals there was already evident long before. Close to 6,000 migrants arrived in the Balearics during 2024, almost six times the total in 2023, with the large majority of these arrived in the latter months of the year – including more than 700 migrants over the course of just four days in November 2024. Back in 2023, the NGO Caminando Fronteras was already pointing out that migration from Algeria to Spain along the Algerian route, both to the Balearics and the southern Spanish mainland, was “paradoxically” one of the most dangerous route and also the most invisible.
An easily predictable development
In short, the trajectory to the current situation has been many months in the making. As MMC noted last year of migration from Algeria to Spain in general, including the Balearics and the southern mainland, “rather than framing this increase as a sudden ‘surge’ in 2024, it may be more accurate to view it as a gradual rise throughout the years, making a previously less visible route more prominent”. While the rise in migration from Algeria has been driven by a range of factors, including economic and political uncertainty within the country, the impacts of Europe’s increasingly restrictive migration policies have also played a major role in the expansion of these routes: in particular, the harsh securitisation evident in Morocco and Tunisia, as well as the shrinking opportunities for legal migration from Algeria, where Schengen visa denial rates are among the highest of any country.
The need for a different approach
Both Crete and the Balearics appear to experience the results of the effects of the EU’s short-term approach to curbing irregular migration, generally focusing on anti-smuggling and securitisation of specific routes through partnership with third countries, rather than addressing the underlying drivers of migration and the interconnections between various regular and irregular pathways. More broadly, the EU’s current approach to migration policy, dependent as it is on a growing web of partnerships with disparate and in many cases authoritarian governments, leaves it highly vulnerable to any geopolitical shifts.
Our above mentioned “Beyond Restrictions” report had two central messages. First, that smugglers are generally highly adaptative to shifts in migration policy, as they can be quick in responding to the imposition of new barriers by changing their routes and tactics, or taking migrants along more remote, hazardous routes. As MMC noted in relation to the Western Mediterranean route in general, smugglers along the route have remained active by diversifying their activities into “poly-criminal” enterprises during migratory lulls. This may explain the relative ease with which movement along this route has intensified over the past year, with allegations that organised mafias are helping to facilitate irregular migration to Mallorca and elsewhere.
Second, that the current EU externalization strategy looks increasingly unsustainable, as the seemingly never-ending number of deals with external partners becomes increasingly financially and politically costly to maintain. As a result, when one departure and/or entry point is closed down, very often some others reopen, or alternatives will quickly emerge. This is what is happening with Libya, but also in the Canary Islands – where, in the wake of anti-migrant crackdowns in Mauritania and Senegal, secondary routes from further south in Guinea-Bissau and Guinea-Conakry are emerging.
This is why the EU’s ongoing reliance on both anti-smuggling operations and externalization policies is unlikely to yield lasting results. Despite increased efforts to disrupt smuggling networks, these actors have proven highly resilient. Far from being dismantled, many networks are thriving. At the same time, it is migrants who continue to bear the brunt of these approaches, facing heightened risks, inflated costs, and limited access to protection and mobility.
Meanwhile, the externalization of border controls – through deals with a growing number of third countries, often with poor human rights records – become increasingly fragile and unsustainable. The political and financial costs of maintaining this web of partnerships are mounting, and new routes inevitably emerge when others are closed. Unless the EU reorients its focus to include the demand side of irregular migration—by substantially expanding safe and regular migration pathways, particularly between Africa and Europe—and integrates this within a broader, more comprehensive approach to irregular migration and smuggling, irregular movements will continue to persist. Without this recalibration, the cycle of reactive, security-driven measures will continue to deliver only short-term gains while exacerbating long-term challenges