Illegal border crossings and first time asylum applications (in millions)

In 2016, Frontex detected 0.5 million illegal crossings between border crossing points. While the number of detections is significantly lower than in 2015 (1.8 million), it is still four times higher than the average number of detections recorded between 2010 and 2014. The number of (first time) asylum applications increased progressively from 0.2 million to 1.2 million between 2010 and 2015 and decreased only slightly in 2016 (see figure 2).