Balkan Route

The 2015 European migrant crisis, also known internationally as the Syrian refugee crisis, was a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe in 2015, when 1.3 million people came to the continent to request asylum, the most in a single year since World War II. Those requesting asylum in Europe in 2015 were mostly Syrians, but also included significant numbers of Afghans, Nigerians, Pakistanis, Iraqis and Eritreans, as well as economic migrants from the Balkans.

Europe had already begun registering increased numbers of refugee arrivals in 2010 due to a confluence of conflicts in parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa, particularly the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, but also terrorist insurgencies in Nigeria and Pakistan, and long-running human rights abuses in Eritrea, all contributing to refugee flows. Many millions initially sought refuge in comparatively stable countries near their origin, but while these countries were largely free of war, living conditions for refugees were often very poor. In Turkey, many were not permitted to work; in Jordan and Lebanon which hosted millions of Syrian refugees, large numbers were confined to squalid refugee camps. As it became clear that the wars in their home countries would not end in the foreseeable future, many increasingly wished to settle permanently elsewhere. In addition, starting in 2014, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt stopped accepting Syrian asylum seekers. Together these events caused a surge in people fleeing to Europe in 2015.

The vast majority of refugees coming to Europe did so by crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece and subsequently making their way by land through the Balkans towards the European Union. This was a significant change to previous years: before 2015, most refugees had reached Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Italy, largely due to the collapse of border controls during the Second Libyan Civil War; these were mainly migrants originating in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Aegean Sea route was used by refugees originating in the Middle East, mostly from Syria, or destinations further into Asia, mostly from Afghanistan. The southeastern and central European countries through which refugees traveled to reach Western Europe were unaccustomed to and unprepared for the sudden movement of tens of thousands of refugees through them. Many reacted by closing their borders to neighboring countries. While intended to regain some measure of control, these measures often contributed to chaos as huge numbers of people repeatedly became trapped in one country or were shunted back and forth to another. Most countries refused to take in the arriving refugees; Germany ultimately accepted most of them after the government decided to temporarily suspend its enforcement of an EU rule requiring asylum seekers to remain in the first EU country they set foot in. Refugee arrivals began decreasing rapidly in autumn 2015 as winter set in and the cold made the journey more dangerous. In March 2016, Turkey agreed to strengthen border security measures in order to "take any measures necessary to stop people travelling irregularly from Turkey to the Greek islands". In exchange, Turkey received €6 billion to improve the humanitarian situation faced by refugees in the country.

The crisis had considerable short-term and long-term effects on the politics of both the affected EU countries and the EU as a whole. Right-wing populist parties in the affected countries capitalized on anti-immigrant sentiment, in many cases making it the centerpiece of their platform. Although they generally did not win enough votes to enter government, their presence often influenced politics by complicating the formation of governing coalitions and making opposition to immigration part of the political mainstream. A strong push for reforms to EU asylum law was made during and immediately after the crisis, but largely fizzled out after refugee arrival numbers receded.

Terminology

News organisations and academic sources use both ''migrant crisis'' and ''refugee crisis'' to refer to the 2015 events, sometimes interchangeably. Some argued that the word ''migrant'' was pejorative or inaccurate in the context of people fleeing war and persecution because it implies most are emigrating voluntarily rather than being forced to leave their homes. The BBC
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